Note: Making a decision on cancer treatment is highly personal. This is NOT a recommendation, just my personal story.
Here’s the bottomline: I went ahead and had prostate surgery on December 9th, three weeks ago to the day. This was after I almost hit the pause button.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about prostate cancer in particular is the sheer number of options available for treatment, ranging from Brachytherapy to external radiation to surgery, which removes the prostate entirely and might be considered the most radical. When I talked to my radiologist and my surgeon, they both said very similar things: outcomes are generally similar from one treatment to the next. So I was in a bit of a limbo, unsure of which way to go. I scheduled my December 9th surgery as a back-up, giving myself a little time to do more research on which options to pursue.
In mid-November, I posted on FaceBook a little ‘PSA about your PSA’, encouraging men of a certain age to get their PSA levels checked STAT, with the hope that maybe a few of my friends would read it and get the wake-up call: Prostate cancer is easy to diagnose, and treatments are plentiful if caught in time. You can read the post here.
Within minutes of making this post, one of my clients called and insisted I call his doctor in California (Dr. Steve Kurtzman) who specializes in a very specific and highly targeted approach to Brachytherapy. Brachytherapy has gotten somewhat of a bum rap over the years, but has recently seen a resurgence with new technologies and new approaches. Basically, this treatment involves placing radioactive seeds next to the prostate tumors, which in turn destroy the tumors over time.
I reached out to Dr. Kurtzman via email, and he replied that same day and we set up a call. On the call, he not only explained the benefits of Brachytherapy to me, but he was pretty clear: this is the best treatment out there. He was very definitive about this, but only if done with the right doctor, of which there are only a handful in the US (and which he is one).
On top of that, he was responsive and congenial, something not always found in the medical profession. He asked me to watch a video he put together, and when I was done with it I was pretty sure this was the way to go. If you have prostate cancer, I highly recommend spending the time watching this and taking this approach into consideration.
My challenge? I was running out of time. It was now mid-November. And the referral Dr. Kurtzman gave me in the Seattle area couldn’t see me until mid-January. Then the Brachytherapy itself couldn’t be scheduled until later. The clock was ticking, and I felt the pressure of just getting this all resolved.
So I talked to my surgeon again (Dr. Schade at Fred Hutch), and though he agreed that Brachytherapy was a good option, he did not agree it was good to wait. He thought there was a 95% chance the surgery would remove all the cancer, and that this would be a ‘one and done’ approach. I was swayed yet again.
As a side note, what was especially tough through the whole process is that Brachytherapy wasn’t even initially recommended to me by anyone other than my client. It was not considered a primary form of care at Fred Hutch, nost likely because they lacked the expertise. This confused me even further, since Fred Hutch is considered one of the pre-eminent cancer treatment hospitals in the world.
At the end of the day though, I went under the blade on December 9th. Yes, I went back and forth on it. Yes, I wish there was a clear definitive answer as to which path I should have taken, but at the end of the day I had to make the decision with the best available information I had at the time. Results may vary.
I’ll tell you the complete story about my surgery in my next post later this week. But in a nutshell: it was a lot less painful than expected. I’m recovering nicely. Incontinence and sexual dysfunction (two huge side effects of surgery that you need to anticipate) are so far very manageable. All pathology came back negative, which is a good thing. There are, indeed, signs of life.
But, as we all know, cancer is a pesky adversary. So hyper-vigilance is needed. In the meantime, I’ve been resting. I’ve been spending time with family. I’ve been watching movies and playing Wingspan. I’ve been ever thankful for my wife Lisa, who has helped pull me through like the saint and warrior that she is.
More to come.