I had good meetings with the radiologist and the surgeon on Wednesday. I was given a lot of information.
The logical choice is to do the surgery. There is a minimal chance of permanent side effects from the surgery after a 1-6 month healing period. I am waiting for the scheduling department to call me to set up an appointment.
The surgery will be laparoscopic, robotic (minimally invasive) with six 1/2 inch incisions barring any complications. The surgery (barring any complications) should take about three hours under general anesthesia.
There is a 99% chance of being cancer free after 10 years and a 97% chance of being cancer free after 15 years.
There is, however a 50% chance that I will still need to undergo radiation (8 weeks, 5x a week) and hormone therapy due to the cancer penetrating the area around the prostate given the amount of cancer and the gleason number (8) of the cancer. They won’t know until the prostate is removed and sent to a lab.
There is the option of just doing radiation, but surgery is very difficult if not impossible after radiation due to the damage that the radiation causes to the prostate,
I am not a candidate for the radiation pellets due to the size of my prostate.
