I admit to a bit of nervousness as I kept waiting for the doc to get in to see me an hour and 1/2 after my appointment time and maybe an hour after blood was drawn. As I sat there twiddling my thumbs I start thinking "uh oh, they have bad news for me, again". Plus, I probably was a little anxious anyway as the day approached, what with my G9, +SV, + foci margin. And after all my surgeon up at Vanderbilt(J. Smith), considering the path report, gave me a no better than 50% chance of not needing some RT/HT later on. I've felt extremely lucky to have not already gone up some. So, well, Y'all know. A little nervous when I would actually think about
it.
But I am off the hook for at least a bit longer, next scheduled follow up in September. < .01 ng/ml.
He agrees with my Vanderbilt surgeon that the longer I can stay below even 0.1, the more likely that it is a less aggressive cancer that got left behind and/or the more likely it is still local and that the RT can help. Plus that, whatever I've got continence wise, the RT will stop any more progress, so the longer I can put it off, the better as far as SEs at least. He also discussed the genetic testing of my surgical specimen, what is it- Prolaris? Something like that, it has been mentioned here. He is going to another conference about
that soon.
So, so far, so good. We(my local guy and I) talked about
implants and slings or AUS and another guy he refers to in Nashville who does all 3, I think he said Knowles? He said the guy came down here to supervise him for 5 slings. The Nashville guy supposedly gets great results but local guy's results sucked so he quit doing them. One guy had an erosion through the urethra and he had sent him back up to Nashville to get it fixed. ( I appreciate his honesty) They had to cut through the urethra again, sew it back together like with the RP, and that guy ended up with an AUS. He said if he was me he would not be having more surgery for incontinence considering I am doing pretty well, but he would encourage the implant after about
6 more months. Said he had one guy that was dead as a door nail, then woke up with morning wood at 18 months and has done fine since. I forgot to ask him if that guy was non-nerve sparing like me, probably not of course.
So, it's been a good day! Now if I can get out of here despite that winter storm warning and make it to Birmingham for our flight to FL for our cruise, it will be even better!