Prostate cancer diagnosed

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Iceni

i dont know how positive this is going to sound - but my husbands aunt had ovarian cancer - they removed it, then they found out she hadCOLON cancer - and gave her 6 months to live...that was 15 years ago, but she died the beggining part of this year...her health failed roughly 5 years ago....the cancer spread, and when it did it went to her stomach/intestines... she suffered the last 5 years of her life, and in dubious amounts of pain....had they had removed the cancer cells and she had gone through treatment 15 years ago (with of course todays technology) she might be ok, still alive, and not in pain....

again, dont know how poitive this is - but this was my exp....

Warm wishes, and i hope your hubby the best of health...

Ada

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Prostate cancer in a female??

Iceni - if your beloved is being monitored, take the opportunity of gleaning as much information as you can. The treatments you have mentioned are very invasive and the side-effects are long lasting and very unpleasant. At his age, surely it is better to have annual checks to make sure the psa level doesn't rise. My husband (61)is on annual checks, and his level are around 6.5/7.5 - his GP is trying to avoid intervention where at all possible. If and when the levels rise, he will make the ultimate decision. I have cared for several men who have undergone treatment, and the outcomes were not good and very invasive.

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Thanks for the replies Ada and Jabba.

Jabba, I'm sorry tohear your husband has also been through this. Did he have biopsies to confirm cancer cell present.

My husband has gleason 3+3, results, so moderate cells.

A friend of ours who is 58 had the op last year and we know its pretty awful.
I've been investigating the brachytherapy option at the mo, but favour the watchful waiting for a good while yet but felt the urologist wouldn't recommend too long a wait.

Is your husband depressed at all by it hanging over him.

Iceni x

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Hi Iceni,

The options don't look ver appealing to me, and I agree with Jabba The Hut that if you have time tlo look at and review all the information you shoulc. Having said that I remembered something from Celebrity Big Brother that Dirk Benedict had prostate cancer so I got this information off of his wikipedia page:

Benedict was diagnosed with [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate_cancer ]prostate cancer[/link] in 1974. The medical doctors recommended surgery, but he claimed to have cured his [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer ]cancer[/link] through a macrobiotic diet, exercise and fasting, over a period of 3 years under the guidance of [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kushi ]Michio Kushi[/link] according to his book [link= http://www.dirkbenedictcentral.com/confess.php ]Confessions Of A Kamikaze Cowboy[/link]. He claims he survived the disease without surgery, and with only the help of a [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrobiotic_diet ]macrobiotic diet[/link] recommended by [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Swanson ]Gloria Swanson[/link], a diet that he continues to eat to this day.

Also this is the link to the wiki page on prostate cancer [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate_cancer ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate_cancer[/link]and here are a few more links, although I am sure that you have probably read all of this [link= http://www.prostatecancerfoundation.org/ ]http://www.prostatecancerfoundation.org/[/link][link= http://www.prostate-cancer.org.uk ]http://www.prostate-cancer.org.uk[/link] [link= http://www.prostatecancercentre.com/ ]http://www.prostatecancercentre.com/[/link] [link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrobiotic_diet ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrobiotic_diet[/link] and [link= http://www.macrobioticcooking.com/ ]http://www.macrobioticcooking.com/[/link]

Hope this is of some help, and my thoughts are with you both.

x

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

sorry jabba - i didnt mean prostate - i meant colon cancer....my apologies....have edited

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Holistic heaven

Thank you so much for those links, I will look at them all.

I've ordered lycopene, sawpalmetto and lecithin for him and will get some pomegranate juice and pumpkin seeds. Its certainly worth trying all those things first.

hugs

Iceni x

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Hi there Iceni

You might like to investigate the Bristol Cancer Centre's website for ideas, and folks like Cancer BACUP are a mine of information. They have people you can talk to on the phone. As someone who went down quite a radical medical route (with the help of the complementary approach alongside that) to deal with their cancer I don't want to influence you in either direction. I can only say that I am glad I did what I did - but we are all different. My very best wishes to both of you, and I hope you can manager to remain positive (I know there are up and down days but hopefully more of the up ones!).

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

I am sorry to hear about this

I strongly recomend a second opionion.

I waited 2 years after my diagnosis (at a similar age) watching the PSA slowly go up and at 7.5 decided with my consultants advice to have the radical prostatectomy.

Then we watched the PSA and it fell to nearly zero and then slowly rose again so 2 years later had a course of radiotherapy.

The cancer while hammered by the radio.... is still there and my PSA is rising again.

I have often wondered what would have happened if I went for the op sooner, and/or if the radio.. had been done sooner as well.

I have heard all the wise words about watchful waiting, but at our ages the watching can go past the point where there are the best prospects of successful treatment.

Another treatment you should enquire about is HIFU - high intensity focused ultrasound.

If you want any more detail about my experience of the surgery or the radio... let me know.

and whatever you both decide good luck

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Hi Alrl thank you for replying. I saw your prior post re prostate cancer.

I would be very interested to hear you experiences. Do you know what your Gleason scores were. They seem to identify if the cancer is aggressive of not or spread at all.

Do you regret waiting now and wish you had the op sooner?

I read a report that said in autopsies of men around the age of 50 who had died for other reasons, 50% had cancer cells in the prostate!, so are we really victims of knowinga little too much.

What do you think?

I hope you are welll at mo, are you taking the supplements etc now.

Iceni x

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Hi Iceni

I cannot remember the gleason scores, they were just above average as I recall.

Yes I regret that the doctors at the time did not give me a greater sense of urgency and that the operation was left for two years.

And yes I am taking the supplements - I would add Selenium ACE to your list, and what you are doing with the lycopene is taking a tomato supplement. The important point is that it should be processed tomatoes so I am also taking a large glass of tomato juice regularly together with other obvious things in the diet such as bolgnaise.

When things did progress I opted for the op rather than the radiotherapy. One of the reasons was that if the op did not clear it up completely radio.... remained as a follow on option whereas the reverse does not apply.

Yes it is a major op. I was in hospital for 4 days. The catheter which remained for 3 weeks was the worst. I gather they are doing 2 weeks now. I was back in my (home) office within 2 weeks of the op, walking the dog almost immediately i got home albeit not for long distances due to the discomfort from the catheter ( I gather I had it worse than normal). and playing golf again within 6 weeks.

I was very worried about what might happen when the catheter was removed, having been advised of possible incontinence problems, but was pleased to find that I was immediately back to normal.

The radotherapy was just plain boring, a trip to the hospital 5 days a week for 4 weeks. I suffered no side effects. They kept asking me and seemed surprised when I kept telling them I was fine, so perhaps I had a good experience of that.

The theory is that when the prostate was removed, a microscopic bit was left behind.

I am now in the watchful waiting stage. I am advised that because hormone treatment is only effective for for a finite time, I should continue to enjoy my present health while the disease progresses, and only turn to hormone when it is much worse. While I understand the logic, I would redefine the situation to "you have got a serious condition and there is nothing the medical profession can do to cure/contain it. We need to leave that until it is much worse.

What other serious medical conditions are left to fester in this way ?

Inventing a treatment called watchful waiting avoids that admission.

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

ps

cancer cells

I think it goes beyond cells in the prostate, it is my understanding that we all have cancer cells of one sort or another floating around inside. In most cases our immune systems deal with them.

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

I think it will be very useful for all of us.
I hope this information help us to improve.

Ivancin

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Just wanted to add to this post about prostrate cancer. My husband was diagnosed with it in 1995 at the age of 69 years. He had a choice of treatment and picked injections of Zoladex which were administered every three months. Over the years,he fought this cancer and eventually we were told it should be 'burned out' at the end of the year 2005 so he asked if the injections should stop.
But prior to this in the year of 2002,he started to bring up blood. I called the doctor and was told because the blood was a certain colour,it was not dangerous! He did not lose any more blood for a quite a while.
Anyway,to go back to 2005,he started to vomit blood again so was admitted to hospital where they found out he had an ulcer in the stomach and underneath that ulcer they found stomach cancer. When I inquired how long he had,had the stomach cancer,I was told 'quite a long time'. When a person has had any type of a certain cancer,why arn't different types of blood tests carried out to check that the cancer has not spread?

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

Anyone who knows anyone with Prostate Cancer must be sure to inform them that men who spend more than 20 hrs a week outdoors in the sun will halve their prosate cancer risk and as survival is highest for summer and autumn diagnosis when Vitamin d status is at it's highest, it's important not only for prevention but to improve prognosis. Information on how to improve your skin's natural sunscreenpotential so you can acquirea high vitamin d status and reduce the higher risk of prostate cancer (10,000 UK deaths) without increasing your lower skin cancer risk(2000 UK deaths). In this thread [link= http://www.healthypages.net/forum/tm.asp?m=426124 ]Vitamin D3 Cholecalciferol[/link]
But considering all the UK cancer deaths that would be prevented by high vitamin d status (115,964) against those increased by excessive sun exposure[4057] the odds are 30 to 1 in favour of ensuring you get maximum safe exposure to sunshine this year and supplement with an effective amount (your body uses between 3000 and 5000iu a day) of Cholecalciferol vitamin d3 daily in the Winter.

RE: Prostate cancer diagnosed

For what it is worth - I have just now ordered a book by Ron Gellatley - How to Fight Prostate Cancer and Win