Hi All -- I know the common wisdom is a final post-op pathology report overrides the conclusions of a contradictory earlier MRI (Tesla 3). I had an MRI at Johns Hopkins in December '14. The "Impression" of that MRI by a radiology resident, that was reviewed and approved by the head of the MRI department ("non-organ confined disease with extraprostatic disease present. Extracapsular invasion is present on left"), was followed 5 weeks later by a final pathology report that my PC was "capsule contained." Who is right? Could both Johns Hopkins Radiology Department and Johns Hopkins Pathology Department both be correct? Or do I have to choose one conclusion or the other?

Of course I'm ecstatic the RRP by a nationally prominent and highly experienced JH surgeon (3,500+ RRPs) was deemed a resounding success, confirmed by one of Jonathan Epstein's colleagues in Pathology. Yet I have to smile at the hopefully faint possibility I may not be done with cancer in my lifetime. What did the radiology resident and his supervisor both see on those MRI slides that prompted them to say what they said?

Maybe as Bob Dylan said, "The answer is blowin in the wind." Maybe it's just an absolute truth that our human minds are limited, our minds don't have the capacity to fully understand some things, and even though I love certainty and guarantees and absolute confirmation something can be trusted, well, maybe Existence isn't designed that way. Quantum Physics says I believe a sub-atomic electron can exist simultaneously as both a wave and a particle . . . thank you Wikipedia for this . . .
_________________________

-- Wave–particle duality is the concept that every elementary particle or quantic entity exhibits the properties of not only particles, but also waves. It addresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects. As Einstein wrote: "It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do"
_________________________

My point being maybe both Johns Hopkins' Radiology Department's conclusion -- "non-organ confined disease with extraprostatic disease present. Extracapsular invasion is present on left" -- is just as true as the final post-RRP surgery Hopkin's Pathology Department's my Prostate Cancer is "Capsule contained." Seemingly contradictory conclusions. But who knows? Maybe I have to forget logical reasoning?

What do I truly know? I'm sitting at my desk at home. I don't feel like I'm moving. But the earth is spinning on it's axis while also orbiting the sun. And isn't our entire solar system moving heaven knows where throughout the cosmos? Don't all the masters down the ages say the same thing? Life is a mystery, not a problem to be solved. My mind wants certainty about cancer. Maybe it's just not in the nature of things for me to ever find that certainty. I'm going out for a walk -- 54 degrees here now and heading for a predicted 75 today. If that happens, that will make today the warmest day so far this year in the Mid-Atlantic region of America. Lovely!

Happy Thursday!

Bill Positive

Interesting that you mentioned quantum physics. I direct your attention to the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle -- which provides a useful metaphor for the central underlying fact of prostate cancer: You just never get to know anything for sure.

I'd go with the post-op pathology report for two purely probabilistic reasons:

1) it is more likely to be right.

2) it is less likely to make you crazy.