Hello everyone! Last week was a bit of a bombshell week for prostate cancer in my family. First my dad died as a result of the disease on Monday. He'd been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer 4 years earlier aged 75. He'd become refractory to treatment and went downhill quite quickly over January and early February.
Then 72 hours later, I received the news I had been dreading. That I'd become the 3rd generation of the family to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, only a lot younger - being 44. I've been given a stage 3a diagnosis, with a Gleason grading of 7 (3+4). I have a suspicious bulge on one side of the prostate, where all cores came back (3+3), so it seems that all the 4 cells are within the prostate itself. Both sides came back positive 5/6 cores cancerous on one side and 3/6 cores cancerous on the other. My MP-MRI showed no evidence of seminal vesicles invasion and lymph nodes look ok.
The treatment I've been recommended is a radical prostatectomy with extended lymph node dissection and I'm looking into getting this done ASAP. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's had a similar diagnosis at a similarly young age. A lot of the information I've found seems like the average age for this sort of treatment is a lot older, so I'm not sure whether to expect more side-effects / less side-effects; how long should I plan on being out of action etc.?
Not really sure how I've taken all this. At the moment I kind of feel like the surgery is just an "event" that needs to be planned for, but I suspect I'm in a bit of denial with everything that has happened, at the same time as my dad dying.