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Cryosurgery No Recovery

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Posted 9/16/2016 8:08 PM (GMT 0)
I had Cryosurgery almost 8 months ago. Still cannot sit in chair for long periods of time, definitely no bike riding.When I do I have extreme prostate pain and I have to use a catheter to go to the bathroom until it settles back down, usually a week or so. I am still passing small chunks of blood. It seem like my prostate is not frozen.I was told recovery was 3-6 weeks. Anyone else had on going symptoms after Cryo?
Posted 9/16/2016 8:13 PM (GMT 0)
Where was this procedure performed and by who?
Posted 9/16/2016 8:52 PM (GMT 0)
Hey Bunky ....this could be a very interesting post ....I hope many chime in .....So sorry to hear about your continued problems ..most of us worry about the outcomes ..... sucks for sure when things don`t go right or as expected ....Cryo is relatively new ...don`t hear much about it , so I`ll be watching .....take care and good luck on your recovery.....David
Posted 9/16/2016 10:54 PM (GMT 0)
Hi Bunky -

I'm sorry you're struggling so much with this. Was this focal cryoablation, or whole gland cryoablation? It sounds like whole gland cryoablation from your post. Whole gland cryo has a lot of side effects (including very high rates of impotence and urinary SEs) and is not often done in the US anymore. They freeze the prostate a couple of times, and as the tissue dies off (ablates), it sloughs off. There can be bleeding as tissue sloughs off, and it leaves scar tissue around it. The symptoms are related to the amount of tissue that was ablated, and, if it was focal, also the location of the spots they froze.

As with other kinds of thermal ablation (like HIFU and FLA), the ablation is sometimes incomplete. Ablation therapy has a 20-30% "do-over" rate because the ablation wasn't as complete as they wanted it to be.

Did you ask your doctor when you can expect symptoms to resolve?
Posted 9/17/2016 1:13 PM (GMT 0)
I had whole gland cryo in January 2011 at Cleveland Clinic.
I had the worst side effects the first 3 months after treatment.
By six months, I was doing quite a bit better.
My referred pain and bleeding resolved. (My pain felt like it was an inch inside the tip of my penis.) My symptoms after 5+ years are a bit of irritable bladder and 2 wakeups a night to urinate. My guess is there is some bladder neck constriction in my case.

i gave provider a list of side effects and the response was defensive medicine. The provider insisted I see a Nurse Practitioner afterward. If I wanted to seek further treatment, I would probably have to find an alternate provider since original physician has stone-walled me.

Good luck with your situation.
Posted 9/25/2016 3:38 PM (GMT 0)
I had complete cryosurgery in 2006, with minimal S/T SE's. PSA has been going up and down since (mostly at very single digit low levels but I am at the point where it has nearly doubled in the past year to 13.6 and I will be going on HT in a couple of weeks. I have posted here before but until recently, PCa has not been much on my mind. Now, it is....
Posted 9/25/2016 5:25 PM (GMT 0)
JoeyG-

That is quite a blow after 10 years. Did you have a bone scan to check for mets? Is salvage radiation still an option for you?
Posted 9/25/2016 5:49 PM (GMT 0)

Tall Allen said...
JoeyG-

That is quite a blow after 10 years. Did you have a bone scan to check for mets? Is salvage radiation still an option for you?


Actually, the PSA has been slowly rising and this was expected to occur eventually. But you know how that goes. PCa when it wants to rear its ugly head, will not do so in drips and drabs but it will do so pretty quickly and that is what I have seen of recent. Time to act!

I had my last bone and CT scan last year (clean) and expect to get another soon. As to radiation, I have had three subsequent biopsies since 2006, which have been all clean and CT scans just showed a dead gland and no other interesting spots around it. I am ready for my next journey, although I hope my doc has an open mind because I want to be VERY active in my treatment.
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