| Week Two. Closer to a decision.
Thanks, Jim, for illustrating the difference between surgery first as opposed to salvation surgery afterwards. That definitely helps. I went in for a 2nd opnion today at the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. As far as stage I am at a T2a. He considers me a high risk case because of my Gleason score of 8. With the DRE he said he wasn't impressed by the size of the tumor, good, but still an 8. He wants to do a full staging with a complete battery of test - CT, bone scan, and one I haven't heard of a 'prostasin test"?. He is calling for a multiple modiality approach, perhaps even including surgery. He likes to draw on the Damico Study from Mass General. He wants to start off with hormonal therapy. For some reason I dread this the worst. He is talking about two years of it. I can deal with impotency, but I don't want to be any lesser of a man than that. I probably don't know enough about it.
I also spoke again to the people at the Dattoli Center. They would also do hormonal therapy but short term-2 mo's before, 2 mo's during and 2 mo's after, idealy. All depends on the results of the staging, I guess. They were surprised that my urologist was considering surgery for someone with an 8 score.
So this is where I am at today. Still leaning strongly to putting my fate in the hands of the people at the Dattoli Center.Thanks for your input, once again. Bwhitney
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