My first piece of advice (based on personal experience) is Don'T Panic! A PSA of 11 is above the threshold for investigation (that's usually 4), but PSA is a poor / unreliable indicator for prostate cancer. When you get to the hospital, they will probably do another Digital Rectal Examination (DRE), then maybe an MRI, I had my MRI about an hour after the DRE confirmed there was a problem. Then there was the TRUS biopsy - probably the least pleasant experience of the lot, but bearable! After that there was a bone scan a week or so later (to check for other metastatic cancers), then appointments with a urologist (to explain the findings) and a surgeon, then an oncologist 3 weeks later. They explained the pros and cons of the various treatment options. Which treatment route was left up to me to choose. Had I chosen surgery, it would have been done about 4 weeks later. I chose hormone and radiotherapy, and had hormone treatment for about 7 months, then 20 doses of radiotherapy over 20 days (with weekends off!). The radiotherapy is painless; the side effects were not pleasant, but not awful either. My last radiotherapy session was on November 12th, and I am now waiting for a blood test to check my PSA before meeting the oncologist again in early June. During the whole process, I have found the support from the hospital to be very good. I know I can call the lead nurse practitioner or oncologist's secretary if I have any questions or worries, and the support from Prostate Cancer UK and Macmillan is brilliant. If it is prostate cancer, it is by no means a death sentence if caught early. It can be slow-growing, it is readily treatable, and the odds are you will be ok at the end of it all. It might not even be prostate cancer! But at least you will know, and that is what counts. The longer you don't know, the longer the cancer has to develop and spread. A positive outlook helps a lot, too.
Edited by member 11 Mar 2020 at 10:10
| Reason: forgot about the biopsy!