Prostate Cancer

My husband has just been diagnosed with intermediate prostTe cancer. He had no symptoms and had a test purely because a good friend of ours was diagnosed a while ago. We currently await an appointment for surgery.
It might be worth mentioning that as far as we understand it, with surgery if cancer later returns its still possible to treat it with surgery and/ or radiotherapy. If after radiotherapy it returns then surgery or radiotherapy is not possible. Hence our decision for surgery but have been told both methods do the same job. Its just harder to decide as we were given the choice of treatment.
Every man over 50 should go and get a test for psa. It isnt completely reliable but can give an indication.

aggie That is so sad. When my DH was diagnosed, he wanted to know everything possible about the illness, treatments etc. We found that doctors sometimes advise what they call 'watchful waiting'. I don't know why this is. My DH wanted an operation to get the prostate removed and was upset when the doc said no, it isn't suitable in your case. You will have radiotherapy etc. The doctor also said 'we are looking to cure this' and so far (touch wood) it has proved the case. Our neighbour has recently been diagnosed and the doctor recommended this waiting but my neighbour insisted he wanted it removed so they did the op. He seems to be doing OK.

My BIL was diagnosed after going to the Doctor about something else , he had 20 years of good health , but sadly it returned with a vengeance and he has since died at 63yrs old , he had every treatment available . when first diagnosed his GP was advocating a wait and see policy , but BIL insisted on surgery . We are still very raw about this and still wonder if the GP was right or was the surgery what gave him these extra years

Dh has his done annually too. He had a really raised figure a few years ago so uses that as an excuse to ask for another..

My DH was diagnosed with this in 2014. There was a TV campaign to try to get men to get themselves tested. He was watching and he said to me 'I think I'll get checked out, I do get up in the night to go to the loo a lot'. Sure enough he had cancer. He was fortunate that he got checked out. He had 37 days of radiotherapy, an MRI scan and a bone scan (prostate cancer has a habit of spreading to the bones) and hormone injections. At his last PSA check last year his levels were down to 0. He now just has to have a blood test every year. The days he went for radiotherapy, we met scores of men coming in with prostate cancer. I think someone said that 240,000 men are diagnosed in the UK each year. I agree with nonnaW, try to get your men to have themselves checked out.

My dh has had the PSA (?) test done every year for quite a while now. I think you can request it from your GP.

luckygirl you're right, this is why there is no screening program for prostate cancer - and also the side-effects of the treatment can be serious so over-treatment is a very important issue.

The test is somewhat controversial - one practice round here refuses to do it, as they say there are so many false positives that a lot of men have unnecessary treatment. However, having the test seems to make sense to me.

I know so many men who have the disease, and thankfully they are all doing very well.

My DH was diagnosed about 2 years ago, and is having hormone treatment and had 7 weeks of radiotherapy treatment. Luckily he has responded well and hisPSA levels are well down. It is worth mentioning though that he had none of the symptoms and in fact was only discovered because the nurse had inadvertently ticked the PSA on the blood test form when he was being tested for something unrelated. It appears they only do the test if requested, they don't offer it as a matter of course. We are just so grateful it was done as it was caught intime. If he hadn't had that test, with no symptoms it could have gone undetected for possibly years.
Please, get your men to ask to get their PSA levels checked!