Wilderness said...
ORP - never undetectable - doing all I can to delay HT. Diet, exercise, manage stress, maybe a supplement or two(?). Did 3 month PSA yesterday. .03 Still holding the line. Hat tip to cashlessclay.
First peas yesterday, blueberries just showing color -
Best to all
Wilderness
Keep on keeping on, Wilderness! about
that "never undetectable": you should have started with my guy! Dr. Joseph Smith, the vastly published William L. Bray Professor of Urologic Surgery and chairman of urologic surgery at high volume Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Though for all I know they might have changed now(my local URO manages my case now, saving me the 4 hour drive), even in 2014 they were still using the standard PSA as of late 2014. So you would have been called "undetectable" with ease as you would have been below .1 by a lot. He did not feel, AT THAT TIME, that there was adequate clinical evidence that acting on the ultra sensitive(US) readings prolonged life. (of course, evidence may have changed by now for all I know). He did feel, however, that minor increases down in the US range vastly increased patient anxiety and possibly even lead to over treatment with it's possible SEs. So I never got an US test until my local guy ran his test om me.
So, if you had just been using my guy from Vandy, you would have been undetectable all of this time!
I am grateful for one result of his approach, only because of how that worked out for me personally. And not at all saying that it is without question the right approach for most. But when he dropped the bombshell that I did NOT get a cure, because I was NOT contained, I could not speak for minute or so due to disappointment. After all, the only real reason I chose surgery over other treatments was because of the possibility(even though statistically small) that it was still contained, and if so surgery would have given me a
cure, maybe. So when I gathered my composure and could speak, I asked "OK, what's next?". My jaw hit the ground next when he said "nothing, not until there is clear evidence something else is needed". Again, he did not feel there was enough clinical evidence(AT THAT TIME) of prolonged life by jumping right on early treatment without evidence of a BCR, or at least rapidly approaching BCR. I had done enough reading here that I was somewhat shocked to hear that opinion.
And I still don't know if this major researcher and clinician was right about
that, or even if he still believes that, I have not talked with him in a couple of years. All I know is that IN MY CASE that approach has bought me at least 3+ years of healing, not to mention avoiding treatments and their possible SEs, and for that I am personally very grateful. And the longer I can stretch that out, the more grateful I am.