Just learnt my Dad has prostate cancer. Am very scared. Any positive stories/advice please?

[Pin0t]

My Dad had a raised PSA blood test, then a clip biopsy. He has been told he has 4 tumours in his prostate. He has had an MRI and they are non-aggressive, but are attempting to move out from the prostate into both the seminal something or other and another place I can't remember (I'm very flustered still).

He is seeing the specialist on the 17th to discuss treatment but I was hoping for MN advice, stories, hand-holding as I feel like a rug has been pulled out from under me at the moment.

My Dad is 67 and is being very calm and intelligent about it. I'm not - I'm tearful and scared that I'm going to lose him

happywheezer, hope it continues like that for another 30 years!

happywheezer, how do you find the non-treatment? I'm very much wanting the cancer to be cut out/pounded by drugs just so it can't get worse. I'd be a wreck if I had the tick-tock of a six month check all the time. Are you OK?

Hello! I am very sorry for your sad news OP :(

You wanted positive stories - a very old family friend of our was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 15 years ago. At the time he was told that, statistically speaking, men with prostate cancer are more likely to die of old age than teh cancer itself.

Our friend is now over 80 and looks like Sean Connery, only more handsome (not even joking). He had radiation therapy I believe, plus some tablet medication which I think he might still take. He looks better than a lot of men 20 years younger who have never had a cancer diagnosis.

Good luck to you & your family and I hope this cheers you a little.

shiney, I didn't know that, so sorry :( How are you coping?

Pin0t - I have been where you are now. My dad was diagnosed on 9/11. I'm really sorry to say that, 10 years on, I don't have a positive outcome to share with you but I do have the experience from that time if you want to talk to someone "independent" as it were. Please feel free to message me if there is any help I can give at all. In the meantime, please take comfort from the fact that there do seem to be far more positive prostate cancer stories/outcomes around than ever before & that treatments and prognosis have moved on since my dad's illness started 10 years ago. All the best, I'll be thinking of you.

P.S. We were also told that if all men lived to 90, something like 95% would have some degree of prostate cancer - quite an amazing fact that!

May I just add - I wouldn't recommend googling everything about prostate cancer either, as Shine said. Each & every case is a bit different & I'm not sure how helpful it is to upset yourself about things that may well never happen.

so sorry to hear that emma :(

My Dad too had prostrate cancer about 6 years ago, it took awhile to treat him due to underlying medical problems but he was given hormone treatment and then bracytherapy.

Shiney is right , many men die with it rather than from it , my Nans friend was diagnosed with prostrate cancer at the same time as my dad, but due to other being a lot older and having major medical issues his hasn't been treated and he's still ok.

It is very treatable having said that and 6 years down the line my Dad goes for his checks and and all is fine , he did have a rough couple of months after the brachytherapy but we all pulled together and got through it. I was living with them at the time (with Dc's) so saw it all from diagnosis to recovery very close-hand .

Sorry shiney :( Your description of when he told you is awful, I can't imagine how that must have felt when you were expecting/hoping for a quick, positive update. Glad to hear he is positive and well in himself, but wish he didn't have to be, and yes, I can imagine you wish he had prostate cancer instead. He is so young for this. I'm sorry for depressing you.
Hope you are getting lots of support.

One thing that is superstitiously upsetting me too is that I have 4 "best" friends, we are a group of university friends. We are all early thirties and I am the only one who still has a dad :(

lol at perfect daughter - I bet you always were to him without any extra effort necessary.
I'm OK...really just want my job stuff sorted so I can be of practical use and not have to rely on them for childcare for a little while. I want to take my children to see them, rather than take them for them to help me! Am also a bit worried about mum, she has just lost her mum and will be trying to hold it together for dad

Good for you! I am trying...have been dieting for a while now but having good days and bad days food wise. (well the bad days taste good!)
IME you spend the first 25 years of you life assuming you and the people you love are invincible and immortal, and from then you start worrying about illness and old age for yourself and everyone around.

fil had this successfully treated (non-surgically) and is now fine. The treatment was tiring but not too bad. Most men get this apparently, and die with it, not of it. All the best.

My Dad had radiotherapy implants (tiny seeds of radioactive material) and had to stay fairly close to the toilet for a few weeks....it made him tired, and a bit low, but nothing more than that. He's absolutely fine, and has been since about six months out of treatment (and not bad at all inbetween, just didn't go out to places with no loos to hand!).

Sorry I had to leave the thread, kids demanding attention etc etc.

Shiney my lovely love, I knew a bit about your Dad but not all of that and am touched at you sharing it here. It does help - I've reread it all twice - it helps making me have a bit pf perspective (and I know exactly what you meant) and it helps to know my weird desire to buy him things is 'normal') and it helps to have someone to talk to. (Please keep it quiet on fb though - coded messages are OK but loads of family on there aren't in the loop).

Is it wrong to want to hug your Dad even though I don't know him, Shiney?

Moonmother (hello! Remember me - Cougar town necklace?!) I'm not heard about brachytherapy so I shall google that with care. Dad has seen the Macmillan nurse and she thinks radiotherapy is the way the Specialist will go as surgery isn't easy as it's moved around. Bracytherapy is useful as I can look it up and help Dad before he sees the Spec next week. Thanks.

Thanks Jodie (Sean Connery look-a-like? Jealous!!) and emma my heart just aches for you. Thank you for opening your hurt up again and posting. That's bravery for you.

Sorry elibean I xposted. Glad your Dad is OK. It's all the side-effects that seem to ruin the dignity :(

PinOt course I remember the Cougar necklace - brachytherapy is where they 'plant' small radioactive seeds into the prostrate. Usually they stay in hospital for 48 hours then home. It does tire them out and he will have problems with his 'water works' for a while afterwards , but they usually give medication to help with that.

The only thing that concerned my Dad about having this treatment was the radioactivity around the Dc's (as I said we were living with them at the time), but we were assured as long as the children didn't sit on his lap for long periods of time then everything was fine. They still had hugs just they sat at his side instead.

Hope everything goes OK, sadly it seems it's an all too common disease in men of a certain age x

Hi OP and all other posters with experience of this disease in your families. Thought I would share my dad's story. After a couple of years of suffering from a benign enlarged prostate and having the TURP operation to treat that, my dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of the cancer in 1999. He had radiotherapy for 4 weeks straight away, and hormone therapy by injection thereafter. For several years the disease had relatively little impact upon his life, he was fit, exercised regularly, etc. After probably about 6-7 years his continence began to be affected and he wore an externally fitted catheter at night. This gradually moved to needing to wear it during the day too, and then after another year or two he ended up having to wear a permanent internally fitted catheter. This obviously affected his ability to exercise, his physical relationship with my mum (sorry if TMI but he was open about it), but for almost the whole of the 10 years he had the disease, it didn't cause him pain, only intermittent discomfort from examinations and catheterisations. During the years of his treatment he also began to become resistant to the hormone therapy and had to have the types of hormone therapy changed a few times.

In September 2009 he began to get pain in his back and it was discovered that the tumour was no longer under control and had begun to spread up his spine. His decline after that was swift, and he died just before Christmas 2009, peacefully at home with my mum by his side. He was 79.

Though the last three months of his life were not so good, I am eternally comforted by the fact that for 10 years he lived with this disease mostly pain-free and still doing all the things he enjoyed. Many of his friends didn't even know he was ill. The C word is so terrifying but there are so many comforting stories out there for prostate cancer. I hope they help you, OP.

God bless my darling daddy, I miss him so much.

Oh fluffy, your pain is so real and makes me feel so choked. I am so so so sorry for you. RIP x