RALP VS SEEDS EBRT decision

Andrew said...
In my family, all three of us brothers had PC and were treated for it with in a couple of years of each other. Two of us used the Kaiser HMO. One brother had surgery at Kaiser, I had IMRT, and our other brother was treated through Stanford and LRD Brachy.

Similar to Andrew, I'm one of three siblings to get PCa and we all had different treatments. One brother had surgery, one had IMRT and I had the brachy/IMRT combo.

Surgery brother was a G6 and he seems to be in the zero club. He did AS for a while, but IMO, he just wasn't cut out for it and he moved onto surgery pretty quickly. I encouraged him to talk to some ROs, but as far as I know, he never did. We've never discussed SEs, so not sure how he's doing in that department.

IMRT brother was a G7, who developed a blood cancer about five years after his PCa treatment. His doctors at the Mayo Clinic thought that his radiation was potentially the cause of his blood cancer, although they had no way of knowing that for sure. If indeed it was the cause, I know the chances of this are very, very low. This brother ended up passing away from complications during a stem cell transplant to treat the blood cancer.

Michael_T said...
Surgery brother was a G6 and he seems to be in the zero club. He did AS for a while, but IMO, he just wasn't cut out for it and he moved onto surgery pretty quickly. I encouraged him to talk to some ROs, but as far as I know, he never did. We've never discussed SEs, so not sure how he's doing in that department.

IMRT brother was a G7, who developed a blood cancer about five years after his PCa treatment. His doctors at the Mayo Clinic thought that his radiation was potentially the cause of his blood cancer, although they had no way of knowing that for sure. If indeed it was the cause, I know the chances of this are very, very low. This brother ended up passing away from complications during a stem cell transplant to treat the blood cancer.

Dam. sorry to hear about your brother. was he older or younger?

I think he left the show.

My URO told me the same day he DX me that he had an RO already setup for a consult if I wanted and highly encouraged me to talk to him. I set up the appointment and talked to the RO about seeds even held some in my hand and talked about IMRT and Protons.
I then went and talked to another Surgeon locally with much more experience than my own URO then decided to take the trip to MDA and talked to a Surgeon there and an RO there that pushed Protons pretty hard.
Maybe I got lucky with my original URO and he gave me options and told me it would be best if I looked into each one before I made a decision.
Ultimately I made the decision to have it removed at MDA and my URO told me he would probably made the same choice if it was his decision to make. He had no problem with me going to Houston for surgery and said he would be happy to take over again once the surgery was done and he ended up taking my cath out and saluted me for doing my due diligence to find a path that worked for me.
As of now 3 and half months out of RALP I am convinced I made the right choice, continent from the day the cath came out and little willie is starting to respond some ,first two post PSA tests came back .064 from my regular Uro and 0.0 from the Surgeons first test. I am following Dr.s orders with the pump, pills and a return trip to see the Penile rehab Doc in March.
I have a friend in Houston that is going through the same thing right now and talked to a Surgeon today, he has G8 and a spot of G9 and is totally freaked out by it and his sister just died of cancer a month ago. I can't walk in his shoes and have given him some advise but he can't get over the fact that he has cancer in him and is not even considering RO. I am worried if he is making a rash decision but I have tried to get him to look at all the facts of each treatment choice but it is going right by him. He is so worried about getting it out that he isn't even going to wait another month to talk to the same doc I used at MD Anderson, he is going to go with a surgeon his URO is recommending so I am just wishing him the best.