Do consider calling your urologists office for a followup sooner than 4 weeks if you are having pain that concerns you. In my personal experience, if it hurts more than having the catheter in did,...
You might want to give "male guards" a try - pretty much requires wearing briefs, but (IMHO) a lot more comfortable than "diapers" and mostly as effective - also easier to dispose of (smaller) and...
We do have to go into this as a thinking adults. As such, you need to give treatment options the smell test, and particularly with PCa, carefully question the motives of anyone who wants to rush you...
I think the big one is that cancer is not a monolithic thing. As such, a monolithic "cure for cancer" is never going to happen. The "cure for the common cold" also eludes a solution, but gets a lot...
I'm not disagreeing with Jerry's graph - it is about deaths per 100,000 per year - it does not have the "when were they diagnosed" component (nor, that I can see, how old they were.) So on a volume...
PCa wise, you do have plenty of time and a good many Christmases regardless of what you choose to do. But - you CAN improve your (PCa and everything else) results by improving your exercise and...
That seems quite late. Talk to your doctor, ASAP. I missed most of that because my RALRP was my second surgical sterilization (they still made me sign the relevant irrelevant paperwork), and the...
For one thing, BC tends to progress and kill quicker. And public relations-wise it's definitely way ahead, and more socially acceptable (in the past 40 years or so; before that, definitely not.) Go...
highlander's way of putting it reminded me of something - exercise/activity is much more important than weight control. If you can't manage both, be active and too heavy, rather than...
Will vary with you your recovery, and your workplace. I was doing some work (computer stuff) 4 days after surgery, with catheter, wearing sweatpants, moving slowly, and not too thrilled about it, but...
Exercise/activity (in accord with your doctor(s)) and healthy weight. Overweight is bad for you, good for recurrence. More to the point, it's also good for a far more frequent killer... ...Dying of a...
I pretty much steamrollered this one when it was sprung on me. I had tried giving up coffee at some point within a few years (ahead) of surgery. Avoided all other forms of caffeine, went through...
I honestly don't know if it has any effect on my leakage, because I refused point blank to stop drinking it. Within a year or so (prior) of "the whole prostate thing" I decided to see if there was a...
Well, I've been to exactly one meeting of my local support group. First I showed up for the meeting listed in a national organization's literature, only to find that it hadn't happened in "a long...
Good to hear you are on the mend. You're having a much better than average time if you are not counting the seconds until Mr. Foley takes a hike (away from you!) I wasn't too bad sitting still, but...
Beware of people projecting their treatment decisions upon you. And good luck with yours - I remember going through this last year, and not fondly. It's never a no-brainer unless you don't think...
No hate, Marie, but way too much hype. Skeeter had a good experience - Fine for skeeter. John had a good experience with Brachytherapy - fine for John. I've had an acceptable but not perfect (I still...
Speaking as a guy who had mine out and would do it again (with the situation I had), I'd say leave it in and radiate it, from what you've posted so far. Combining radiation (external and/or seeds)...
After several decades of being toilet-trained, it's extremely demoralizing to be piddling in your pants. I'd personally planned to put it off until "never" or at least another 40 years or so......
I'd need - yes - no explanation needed to vote in your poll. Let me try an analogy. Say you have a can of Spam (not the internet kid, the meat kind), and it has a couple of peas in it. Or a pea and a...
Also - since I think many new folks miss these "redirects" - brittrobts, you might want to go here, as there is a custom of welcoming new folks into their own thread:...
Yes, it IS a major whack. Follow your doctor's advice, and that should include keeping up with as much of various exercises as are asked of you. I was issued an inspirometer (breathing exerciser) and...
Riggy, If you are expecting observable progress in 4 days, you are presumably also waiting for the Great Pumpkin tonight (say hi to Linus for me.) They are about as likely. In another month you might...
The small amount of good news is it (depending on the value of "a few") took 14-15 years to start climbing again. The bad news is that any significant number post-prostate removal means it's "out...
Don't know for sure - I never really had those. I was advised that they might happen, medication was available if they got too bad, and they should pass in a few days if they happened. Of course,...
I'd guess probably because he's just come off HT and the doc wants to check if anything goes wonky when off it......
Also be aware that things may not get monotonically better. I was getting better for 4-5 weeks, and around 6-8 things went backwards for a while. That was VERY discouraging; but not all that unusual,...
We have a pattern here. I hate broccoli and I got it at 47. If we cherrypick (well, broccoli-pick) our subjects correctly we can produce another paper of at least the quality of some of the actual...
Speak with the surgeon's scheduler or the surgeon. Mine was happy with one week notice, so he claimed. I ended up doing it on schedule, as it happened, but I was not at all sure what I was going to...
I thought long and hard about even posting on a forum in the wide word of tentacles of information all tied back to various nefarious large databases and this was about as specific as I wanted to...
Unless your doctor disagrees, of course: Drink a lot after you wake up. And keep it up. USE the cursed hose (you will curse it) to flush out anything that will flush out. Fill the danged bag. Start...
John T's insightful analysis ignores all the folks that have surgery and don't recur...which hold water perfectly well. But his tired old tactic of calling a valid concern (especially for us...
But the important question is whether he's been invited to GFMPH yet... Not that I'm going to be able to make BR - I might, might be able to make Roch-cha-cha unless it manages to line up with...
5+months and finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel; still wearing pads but have had a real slowdown (not that I was ever all that bad - pad a day or less most of the time, occasionally 2...
They agree that you have Gleason 5 tissue. The difference in extent and/or Gleason 4 is going to be at least in part due to human factors. What is or isn't and what Gleason score it is, is a matter...
Folks that get "cured" tend to move on more than folks that get the short end of the statistics, and I think that accounts for a lot of what you are seeing in terms of what's posted. Just over 5...
Sorry Jerry, I don't - this was gleaned in reading articles, etc. during my "crazed research" phase pre-surgery, not from knowing people with that sort of stats. Glad to hear you are generally...
Based on what I've read, the fact that it did get as high as 17 might be a relatively good sign (no, really.) There is an ugly subset of G8-9-10 tumors that produce very little PSA (ie, fully...
Margins are the cut edges (ie, where the protstate was cut free of the body) and negative margins means no cancerous cells were detected at those margins. Extraprostatic extension would be "other...
Well, aside from the hope (dashed) of not joining our ranks, not so terrible, actually. Do NOT Panic. Odds are great that you'll be around for college graduation whatever you do. Treatment is more...
Don't panic. You have an abnormality which might indicate something. Your doctor is looking into it. He's going to have a look with ultrasound, and if that leaves him in doubt, he's going to biopsy,...
...so you might be part of the 32.1% that manage that low number and don't have PCa. But given things are suspicious, you may go through various further tests to try and figure out what's going on...
Statistics give some clue as to what the odds are, but tell you nothing bout your individual case other than that you may have ended up in the majority or the minority. Somebody gets the short end of...
You might want to check if the second test was already run with Free PSA % - an efficient doctor may have ordered that, given what your first test number was, but if they don't mention it and you...
Start the serious "get healthy" program before you worry too much about what you are doing with PCa - it won't keep you from either moving forward on treatment or deciding to delay treatment until...
I was warned about this but did not have it. Personal theory (not in any way factually substantiated) is that part of the reason I didn't have it is that I already had it, the only other time I...
Mine was drawn 6 weeks post surgery, tested < 0.1 - if there's not an error, I don't think more time will help. Let's hope for an error....
It depends... My surgeon is pretty much a robotic surgery specialist. As of the 3 month followup, I've switched back to the guy who did my consult and biopsy, partly because he's closer and partly...
It's a scary side effect. I've been told that it's not all that common, but that won't be much consolation if it happens to you. I've had no actual problems with it (took at biopsy and after surgery)...
From what I read/understand, without a positive margin there's not a lot of point in SRT as there's no particular reason to expect that the escaped cells are hanging around the prostate bed, as would...