What factors helped you choose between prostate cancer treatments?

Thank you for sharing your diagnosis and treatment options with the community. Making treatment decisions for prostate cancer involves weighing many personal factors, and connecting with others who have navigated similar choices can provide valuable insights. Community members often share how factors like their age, lifestyle priorities, potential side effects, and recovery time influenced their decision-making process, so hopefully others will respond with their experiences to help inform your journey.

Dear David M — As to your 1st question: I chose radiation (42x EBRT) plus ADT (4 months) over surgery because I had previously had three urological procedures, all of which failed to help me and created complications that made RP riskier than usual. As it turns out, now that I’m 3 years post-diagnosis and 2 years post-initial treatment, that’s the first and last beneficial event in my PCa misadventure, which has devolved into a series of deleterious side effects leaving me with likely permanent sexual, urinary, and bowel impairments. As to your 2nd question, my list of things I wish I had known now numbers 48 items. The most consequential are the following … 1. I wish I’d known that none of the 10 physicians I consulted gave me a true indication of the risks and side effects of the treatments they suggested. 2. I wish I’d known that the only person who could reliably act with my best interests being foremost is me, and therefore it’s my job to educate myself on PCa treatments in general and the PCa treatments best suited to the specific characteristics of my cancer. 3. I wish I’d known that over diagnosis and overtreatment are rampant in addressing PCa—estimated by some experts to be as high as 50%. 4. I wish I had known about Outcomes4Me and—before deciding my treatments—read every posting under every topic in O4M, because PCa patients know the full range of effects of the treatments they undergo, while providers gloss over, sugar-coat, or fail to mention most or all of the potential negative side effects.