Get my biopsy results on Monday

Hi Andy.

I see in a previous post that the suspicious area is well contained within the prostate, which is good news. I'm afraid you'll just have to wait for your biopsy results which will show far more clearly what's going on.

Most of us find the waiting for result the most difficult problem to deal with.

Have you posted your PSA result?

Best of luck mate.

Edit: I see that you've suffered from prostatitis and that your PSA tests have fluctuated between 4 and 6.6. which in the grand scheme of things, aren't very high.

Edited by member 27 Sep 2024 at 15:36  | Reason: Additional text

A nurse told me my result, I was hopeful until I realised it was a Macmillan nurse although maybe they do them all.

It's surprising you were told a paper letter is normally negative.  Even so I'd cling to the UTI theory being possible. They should want to treat it.  Some people get very high psa from inflammation.

I was ready for whatever.

Hi,  that's a shame. 

It's quite a thing about whether you can tolerate it being inside of you.   I felt rushed as it was said to be near the edge.  There was another person on here at the time and he spoke to several consultants taking about 6 months.  I thought he was being too relaxed but he went to meet a consultant in London who gave him a non-standard op on the NHS, I think it's called a Retzius operation that goes in from underneath and is said to give better results.  It hasn't caught on though, don't know why.  For some reason he stopped posting after a few years.

I didn't think I'd like the very small recurrance inside me but the Consultant said I could wait for years if it doesn't change the rate of growth and I'm now comfortable with it 98% of the time.   Yours is sheathed to a large extent by the prostate although it's larger, it depends how it's growing.

Mine was near the edge and 13mm diameter did no-one give you an indication of that?  Mine was also 4+3 and ended up as 4+4 so I getting on with it was better.

If I was you I think I'd be pencilling in a schedule.  When do you need to make a decision.   Is your hobby worth delaying treatment.  Would you like it before Christmas or after.  Is it putting off the inevitable.  Mine was a week before Christmas which was better for me as I could hide away and in winter you can wear big clothes and pads.

Something to ponder.  Good luck Peter

Dr Scholz is even more bullish than that - he quotes research which effectively shows that Gleason 6 never spreads, and so AS is, in his view, the obvious route for men with Gleason 6, who in many cases may then live out their lives without ever having invasive treatment.

Two problems with this are:

a. scans and biopsies, although they have improved, are still not accurate enough to determine with complete certainty that somebody really does have only Gleason 6.

b. there is nothing to stop a man with Gleason 6 later developing another prostate cancer of higher grade.

That is why it is so important that Active Surveillance needs to be very "active" - to check that the diagnosis is accurate and to keep monitoring (especially with scans and PSA tests and then, if necessary, repeat biopsies) how things develop.