Repeat Scans back, starting intermitant Lupron therapy

Glad to hear of your results! I understand that lupron can keep lymph nodes in check for many years..It's not bad stuff--Your husband will experience emotions he never knew existed (maybe).
Bill--Age 70--a "seasoned" vet
Dx'd Sept 2010--psa 4.89--bone & ct scans negative--5 G8's and 4 G7's out of 10 cores..high volume and epe..79.2g's imrt completed Feb 2011--.06 after rads & now <.03..lupron for 3 years--1 to go.

Probably the odds to being lung envolved right now might be low, even though your original stats are higher risk scenario. But just to put that discussion into what is normally said about lungs, is it is not that rare, but common area like bones etc. The quote herein is from WebMd article and in general is for Stage IV patients for the lungs issue:

"In stage IV, the cancer has spread (metastasized) outside the prostate to other tissues. Stage IV prostate cancer commonly spreads to lymph nodes, the bones, liver, or lungs"

So, I hope your doc knows in stage IV it is consider common to be found there, unfortunately for any of us facing hrpca scenarios. You are way beyond the expertise of a urologist and don't take my word only for it, hopefully John T will give you a little more info to contemplate on why. I am not long winded right now for writting.

Best to you and results, it is all about results, make sure you read everything at www.hrpca.org it might be very helpful to you along the way.

I think she knows that a medical oncologist is needed. Her husband-not so much.

I'm probably the poster boy for low psa and aggressive PC. Form a team of specialists, create a plan, and treat aggressive.

@ SpecialLady

I've tried to convince hubby to see a medical oncologist- since we got his first PSA score back in August.  He 'likes' this Uro- and he is supposedly one of the best in the Southeast with a large number of PCa patients.  He has an excellent reputation in the medical community and is  leader at one of the major hospitals in our city.  Hubby has  real problem with doctors- he had a bad experience in childhood and basicially refuses to go to a doctor except in emergencies.  Once he decides he 'likes' a doctor though, you can't change his mind.  He WILL NOT consider seeing anyone else at this point.  I've tried and tried.  I won't ruin my marriage by forcing the issue.  I keep presenting the facts and offering suggesstions, but until HUBBY is ready, I can't do  more than that. I've researched medical oncologists in our area and asked some other doctors for recommendations. (Many of them mention this URO by the way as one of the experts in this area). By the way, the radiologist that read the scans is NOT affiliated with the URO.

I'll continue to share here and vent when I need to. 

 

Worried, I completely understand that you cannot change someone´s mind even when it may be in their own interest, been there, done that, gave up. It is also important that your husband TRUSTS the doctor, I am not underestimating that fact. It is just that I cannot simply see the reason for operating on your husband based on the stats, on the other hand, there may have been something I am not aware. I do hope Lupron will work for your hubby for a long, long time, it is quite possible. Some patients also decide they do not want to go down the "agressive treatment" route, and I can certainly understand that, as well.

Jerry, my father has always used this test, always 3 digits after the decimal point. It went down to 0.055 but never any lower. Recent measurement was 1.080, but, he has been off HT since April. Trying to eat vegan (with occasional lapses) and taking 1g pomegranate, we´ll see in January if it is working...

I'm not sure which other disease allows the patient to pick a treatment plan and think that they are experts in the field and can make the right decision. We all are just doing the best we can, and sometimes that means that we find the best doctor we can find, or at least one that we can understand and we go with their opinions. It's easy to think that we made the right choices but perhaps it's just the luck of the draw. How is it that our layman's understanding about the disease and a few articles online gives us a better ability to pick the right treatment than someone who deals with this all day long? I'm trying to figure out right now if my husbands radiation is really necessary or if someone is just trying to make money or if the hospital is just paying for it's equipment, or if really, his chances are better if he has it. Or do we just go with the best treatment plan we can find in our area? If we lived in a bigger city, perhaps we would make different choices. But when things get rough and we aren't able to travel around anymore, we will want someone to deal with that is not too far away.

And every treatment has someone who did well despite their high risk factors and others who failed after going to what they thought was the best choice. It's a survivors game. If you survive, of course you made the smartest choices and are smarter than those that didn't. It's similar to those that think a miracle happened to only them. The survivors are always the most blessed. The others don't get to give their opinions on the treatment/choices/prayer chains.

My husband is enrolled in a study which is looking at surgery vs. chemo and hormone before surgery for high risk cases. He is in the straight to surgery arm, but is also having radiation and had a hormone shot before the surgery. There are many studies that show that surgery in high risk cases is beneficial.
http://www.asco.org/ASCOv2/Meetings/Abstracts?&vmview=abst_detail_view&confid=54&abstractid=20111

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22540922

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175701/

Sorry, those links aren't clickable.

Worried, we are all worried that there is a better treatment out there and only if we would have picked it or found it, we would know what is going to happen. But we have to live with the uncertainty of the choices we made and can only hope that the outcome is positive. Your husband is just doing the best he can with the hand that was dealt him. We can't do "do overs". Since even the experts can't agree on what will work, I think we just need to be supportive of the choices that were made and hope for the best.