A little of both, I suppose, but mostly a caution to all. It is also an explanation for why I haven't been active for a couple of months.
I am just finishing an eight week daily proton treatment for prostate cancer at MD Anderson in Houston, with excellent expectations for the outcome.
Along the way, I learned that about 1 in 6 men will have prostate cancer and the odds drop to 1 in 3 if there is prostate cancer in the immediate family. So several hundred of the men on this forum will develop it. Identified early, it can be contained. Too late, and it will kill you.
The solution is for men over 40 to have an annual PSA test, a simple blood test. A PSA over 4 used to be the point for future treatment, but many doctors have now lowered this to 3 or even 2.5. A more telling symptom is an increase in the PSA number of .75 or more in one year. Keep this record yourself. Do not depend on your doctor.
I want to be charitable about the medical profession, but in talking to many prostate cancer patients at MD Anderson (one of the foremost cancer centers in the world with patients from everywhere), two points stood out. Namely, that family doctors had a wide variation in their detecting and followup of prostate cancer, and that their treatment recommendations were very often outdated. Proton therapy was almost universally unknown or ignored by the diagnosing doctors of the patients in my treatment group, and this seems to be the general case.
Proton therapy is a relatively new way of treating several forms of cancer, including prostate, although it has been used at Loma Linda CA since 1995. At present, it is only available at six places in the U.S. but several new centers are under construction.
The principal advantage to protons is the lack of side effects. All the other treatments have the considerable possibility of bad short/long term side effects. Side effects are
almost zero with protons.
If diagnosed with prostate cancer, I urge you to do your own research on treatment methods, and not depend on your doctor's recommendation. There are many sites on the internet, and a good one regarding protons is listed below.
http://www.protonbob.com/proton-treatment-homepage.asp
My own experience is a daily 358 mile round trip to Houston for a 40 second zapping with protons. This is a little misleading because the actual time on the table is usually about 20 minutes. I feel nothing, either then or later, and so far, have experienced only very minor side effects (burning sensation when urinating cured with cranberry pills.)
One other point is the total and complete sympathetic attitude of the entire staff at the center. From the first day, you are treated as a family member of everybody there. (where else would you be given a business card by all staff from the gate guard to your doctor with their personal phone and email address, and get almost instant answers from phone calls and emails). I cannot say enough about this because it is such a departure from my previous experience with the medical community.
The physical plant of the proton center is very interesting in itself. It involves a cyclotron whipping a hydrogen proton to about 100,000 miles per second before shooting it at your prostate.
I will be happy to expand on any of this by email to anybody that wants to know more.