Well, I've just finish speaking to the owner of a CAT scanner. He says that it's not fullproof and that the ultra-sound can sometimes show the lining to the prostate better. However, the CAT will of course look at the bone structure to some extent and importantly, the lymph nodes in the pelvic area and carry on up as far away as the lungs.

Kwachon, l dont know either if such a scan will show prostate cancer but I do know it is usually detected initially by other means, various symptoms are warning signals then a DRE (rubber glove procedure) and a PSA blood test are the next step. There are various conditions other than cancer that could cause a raised PSA and the rubber glove is more or less effective depending upon where any tumour might actually be and the experience of the finger in the glove.

If there is a cancer concern raised by the DRE or PSA test the next step is a biopsy, needle samples. This is not to be undertaken lightly as there is a risk of causing adominal infection which can be severe, there might be other drawbacks.

I am not an expert in this area but was diagnosed and treated a few years ago and I am not active in a support group for sufferers of prostate cancer so anything I say is really my own experience not the advice of an expert.

"Years ago I put a penny in a slot machine and watched the old brass needle swing round to the message..."You will die when you are 72." I can clearly remember breathing a sigh of relief then, but if I don't make 72, I want my penny back with interest. "

Best you make it through this, then L-R Don't be wasting that penny! I'm sure everyone who "knows" you through pprune will be keeping their fingers crossed.

All the best to everyone else on here having to deal with cancer - hopefully 2008 will bring better news for y'all.

Thanks for that...One is mindful of the film Big, and the mysterious nature of the Gypsy in the fortune telling machine.


While I would not for one moment advise anyone, even as a layman, to resort to alternative medicine, this was forwarded to me by 'er indoors. Its a rather well presented paper with a vast list of the reference studies at the end. As mentioned, curcumin pops up in it.

It takes a while to read, but some of the work on vitamin D is now making world news.

http://www.naturalhealthvillage.com/MXC52-REP.pdf

Update
 

Just had the latest blood test result. The count is down slightly - and therefore headed in the right direction - but not as much as the consultant would want to see at this stage. So, it's back to see the man again next week to decide on a plan of action. Will keep you posted.

Hi all, as an amateur planespotter I take close interest in all the Ad.com and pprune posts.

In my other job as a urologist, i'd be happy to comment and offer advice for those posting in this forum, and give my (specialist) 2 cents worth.

Congratulations on all those talking about CaP and raising the profile as it is an important health issue for us guys. Caution must however be taken as each man;s situation is treated differently : a 45 year old with high grade cancer is in a vastly different boat to an 85 with incidental cancer : the only similarity is the title.

Welcome aboard Aussiepax, maybe you can explain to me what "some calcification of the colon" means, I have looked everywhere and cannot find a simple answer.

well, it is a radiologic ( xray) report finding rather than a disorder or disease entity. It would usually mean nothing. It may be seen because of small fecoliths (calcified stool) in corners of the bowel , particularly with diverticulosis.

Many areas of the body, including the prostate, can get calcification,
but again the clinical significance is rarely great.

Thanks, It turned up on my last CT Scan report but I never got an explanation. :ok:

I have just had a wake up call. The 8.5 PSA, and the advise that I could consider things for a couple of months, has now gone out the window. I got a 11.48 yesterday. Also my FREE PSA is in the 5s :(

My Gleason was 7 with 3 X 3+4s and one 4+3. That was in December.

My question is, could the biopsy's 12 points of intrusion, have affected a score 2 months down the line? After all, there is plenty of blood after the procedure, would this make the prostate send out its signaling molecules?

Am I clutching at straws?

I'll put some Texas prices in just for general interest.

I've not been ignoring the problem. I'm being referred to a specialist at home, but went to a place that does radiation treatment at a bargain price. They said that the actual procedure was done by a "Technician". Is this what would happen at home? I can't imagine the consultant messing with the 15minuets zap a day, so I suppose it doesn't seem unreasonable.

Why I'm concerned is because another former Brit had radiation here and ended up being hospitalized 3 times cos of adhesions. I don't want me pipes cooked. $10,500 and 45 trips to the hospital. This compares with $28,000 in a bigger town.

The other option is to have it out with robotic surgery. $23,000. Since the surgeon is supposed to be a Maestro, and the machine is the DaVinci, it's very tempting to blow the bank and have this soon, but that does not include any scans. I have many symptoms that make me want someone to have a good look round, but they could well be stress induced.

If only I could talk on the phone to an English surgeon as readily as here. One aspect of the $'s power I suppose, but every penny I spend comes out of my meager pension and can never be replaced. Decisions, decisions...

Hi loose rivets, yes the latest PSA could be up a bit post biopsy, but the relevant issues here are that with Gleason 7 disease, that is a clinically significant cancer. With a PSA even of 8.5, I would advise some form of active treatment.

Your options are these
1) radical prostatectomy surgery : either open surgery (4 inch cut above the pubic bone) or keyhole / laparoscopic (with or without robot assistance). The current internatiional data do not find any difference between the types of surgery other than less blood loss with lap vs open. Any claimed benefits or differences with regard to potency or incontinence rates are just that - claims. Up to 50 % of rad prostates are done with the robot in the USA, perhaps < 5 % here in Australia. THis is mainly due to logisitcs / money / marketing forces at work. If you have stage 1 ( non palpable) disease, you could expect 78 - 92 % cure with surgery.

2) Radiation therapy : this can either be external beam ( daily zap for 5 - 6 weeks) or internal (brachytherapy) or a combination.
The external beam alone is probably not the gold standard any more. High dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy with some external beam boost would be more costly but can deliver more dosage to the prostate while minimising the side effects to bladder and bowel. Overall radiotherapy has less immediate damage to erectile function, but in the long term not much different to surgery.


Bargain basement prices for treatment are equivalent to low cost charter airlines - get the drift ?
The very top end prices could also be bumped up by their need to pay their advertising budgets etc, so again caution and a common sense approach is needed there.


In summary - have some treatment within the next 3 - 6 months. You would be well served by either HDR brachytherapy or surgery. Discuss the side effect profiles with your doctors and once you digest that information, you will pretty much know which suits your purposes better.

Hope this been some help, regards.

Good summary, aussiepax.
Rivets, the man has given you a good outline. Not my field, but somewhat knowledgeable, enough to know there is no 100% definitive therapy in most cases. Both lines of treatment appear to be effective in the majority of cases. You can always find some outlier who would have you believe all his docs were quacks, but by and large the results are good.
Get to it, my man!

I really appreciate your input chaps, thanks. Will be taking one's head out of the sand any time now.

Don't ignore any sypmtoms, or take risks with PC
 

I read this thread with interest, in that I've been on both sides of the fence, having had an enlarged prostate picked up in 2002 by an ME in Denver when I was renewing a medical.

On return to Ireland, it was properly and fully investgated, and the end result, not too much time down the line, was a radical prostatectomy, and I'm going to comment on the reason for that now.

I was regarded as very young for Prostate Cancer (51), Gleeson was 3 + 3 on the biopsy, and post operatively, 3+4. I did the research at the time, (2002) and the best piece of advice I got was from a consultant radiologist, who put it very succinctly to me in words something like this.

We can indeed do seeding brachytherapy on this, but there are 2 reasons why I would not recommend it to you. The first is that you are relatively young, and reasonably fit, and the second is that while this treatment has been in use for some time, we don't know the long term effectiveness of it, and if you go this route, you rule out surgical treatment if for some reason the radiotherapy doesn't get it all, as there will be too much scar tissue in the way for a surgeon to be able to operate to the very close tolerances required for success.

That made my mind up for me, and I had radical prostatectomy. I've commented on that in older threads, most of which appear to have been locked now, but I'd still say the same as I did then, with now 5 years down the line to look back at.

So a quick summary

At the time, I was working on the ramp as a baggage handler, and was able to go back to that job, which has to be one of the most physical of jobs in aviation, and the return to it was successful. I'm not doing that line of work now, but that's not for this thread.

I was able to get my FAA class 1 medical back, so Prostate Cancer does not mean the end of a flying career, if that's what you're doing.

At the time of the initial diagnosis, I had no symptoms what so ever, nothing of any kind to indicate that there was any sort of problem with the prostate, if I hadn't had the Class 1, I would not have known about the problem that was there.

If you have any family history of prostate issues, don't leave it to 50 to get it checked, 45 is a safer age to start PSA checks.

PSA checks are not conclusive, but give a guide if there is a problem. A guide is better and safer than not knowing.

Do NOT ignore ANY symptoms of problems. If caught early enough, treatment now is highly successful. 5 Years down the line, my PSA is still undetectable, which is as good as it gets. I won't know for a long time if anything got out before the surgery, but the chances are very good that it didn't, and in that case, the prognosis is that apart from watching the PSA every 12 months, there's nothing else to be done, or to worry about.

My lifestyle has not been fundamentally changed. Read the older locked threads, and you'll see the comment I made then. There were changes, but the changes are far more acceptable than the alternatives. With a new grand daughter who arrived some months ago, that's even clearer now than it was in 2002.

Hope these few comments help, if anyone wants to PM me, I am prepared to be more specific in that area, but I'm not here as much as I used to be, so it might be a while before I respond.

Steve

Interesting post.

I am seeing a specialist in the UK in about a week. It's the only way that I can have a broad spectrum of monitoring without crippling costs. The surgery here was really not too expensive for a normal working person, but for me it would have meant a serious dent in my so-called pension.

I think that if I was young and had just landed here, I would put my money into property rather than medical insurance. Only folk with a good job and premium insurance can relax if the worst happens. Even the co-pay on run-of-the-mill policies can mean the loss of one's home. get sick and it's likely that the insurers won't cover you again.

Good news LR.:ok:

That's good news LR. Hope all goes well for you with the specialist. I'm just back from the consultant who is happy with the progress thus far. Next blood test in 3 months time.

Prostate Cancer - Fresh Thread ?
 

Hi All, just a humble PPL since 1968 and ex-FI, but now grounded past 7 months owing first to 'acute retention' (5 litres!) emergency admission with associated kidney / cardiac trauma, ballistic bp and various following procedures, drug courses and ops .... and latterly because psa was increased to 20.8 , and subsequent biopsies confirmed a malignant prostate tumour. Have been permanently catheterised throughout - mainly the nasty exit version (:mad:), and bladder is completely wrecked. Now have the 'kinder' abdominal version fitted, but still not a happy bunny....

The AME has just rejected my Class 1/2 renewal advances for the 4th time this year, indicated that the Class 1 has gone for good, and that even doubtful Class 2 potential requires much more investigation and treament etc etc etc....it doesn't look good. I understand that even an NPPL self-certification/ GP sign off is invalidated if an AME has issued a rejection, until condition is sorted and stable ?

If you know anything at all about PCa, will be aware that all of the treatment 'solutions' are risky, life-changing and often ineffectual - and that's even if the wee cancer seeds haven't yet gone walkabout elsewhere in the system, determination of which isn't an exact science.
The initial gamma ray bone scan was negative, but other scans (mri, ct) are usually needed also. The next psa test is tomorrow (8/8) and a great deal may depend on which way it has moved. From a quality-of-life perspective my preference right now would be 'active surveillance' , but have already had many indications to counter that option. The most obvious objection is that this stuff is quite insidious, keeps festering and can break out quite quickly and almost un-noticed....and when picked up, may then be too late to treat.

I did once see an earlier thread on this subject on Pprune, following the progress in some detail of a young pilot so diagnosed (anybody know where that went ?). Whilst I'm not exactly young and have no intention of following suit, would welcome observations of all kinds to help with upcoming decisions...and of course, any personal experiences re. getting back into the air !

Cheers for now...... David

?? http://www.pprune.org/forums/medical...te-cancer.html although I'm sure there was something more recent.

Sorry to hear of your problems, it can be a truly sh1ty disease.

I couldn't make out from your post, is it localised to the prostate and what's the issue around surveillance?

Prostate Cancer etc..
 

Hi UKLocations and others ... and sorry for the delayed action response.

My staging is presently T1c / Gleason 6, bone scan clear and awaiting MRI. Latest PSA test had gone down to 12.8 (after June high at 20.8) , but need another test before long to see if the l/t trend is still up...and I'm told I need to get it consistently down below 10, to be considered for 'Active Surveillance' .... although they'd much rather I went straight for radical surgery or radiotherapy - like at least 99% of the other punters do ! Trouble is, any of the treatments have very significant unpleasant side effects, very often prove unsuccessful..... and are likely to change you for good.

Although my Class 1 renewal is being denied and even Class 2 attempts seem like climbing a huge mountain, have just managed to stagger airborne again in a small way, courtesy of the CAA's most enlightened recent move in extending the 'Self Declaration / GP Countersignature' route to holders of JAR licences who only wish to exercise NPPL privileges (essentially Daytime/VFR only). This removed a significant anomaly, but only gets a small way back to where I'd prefer to be (Class 1 reinstatement).

Have read the detailed JAR advice on cancers in general, and it seems very hot on ensuring significant treatment and stability before clearance can be considered. However...there is another anomaly here ; There are very many people out there - and that probably includes quite afew Prune readers (maybe even YOU !) who actually have the Prostate Cancer (PCa) inside them, but just don't know it yet ! Unless you develop symptoms or are tested for some other purpose (or just simply 'screened'), you might never know at all....but logically, if PCa in general was considered such a risky thing, why aren't Prostate Biopsies mandatory for all pilots ??!!

Any other stories most welcome.....sorry to rant. Off to fly my little aeroplane over a few fields, and will try my very best not to terminate any defenceless cows or burn any crops after spiralling out of control as the cancer suddenly bites....