Get your PSA
May 28, 2009 1:29 PM Subscribe
Tomorrow I'm going in for radioactive seed implantation, so this is a patient experience question.
But before I go inside, I want to make a plea to fellow Mefites to ignore recent news articles and get your PSA done. Youth is no safeguard - my prostate cancer would have gone undetected without testing over several years. So, please take care of yourself. (And a biopsy isn't as bad as you imagine if false positives worry you.)
Well, I should have posted this much sooner: by this time tomorrow I'll be back home. But tell me, what's your experience with radioactive seed implantation? My biggest fear at this point is that I'll have to get a catheter, which according to the doc might not come out for a week.
For those of you reading on because of my PSA plea, I'm serious. Mine was caught early enough that I was a good candidate for seeds: if I'd waited longer it would have been either 5 weeks of radiation beam therapy (every day of the work week for 5 weeks) or surgery. So, I'm counting my blessings. Get a baseline PSA now and you'll be able to catch it, too. (And you should be aware that while most prostate cancer grows very slowly, some is quite aggressive.)
Why didn't I post sooner? I made the mistake of reading through previous questions, where some of the answers featured less-than-rosy results. Not for me. I mean, really not for me. If you have gloomy studies or appalling outcomes, please keep them to yourselves. I'd much rather have you lie to me instead. I am thinking only happy thoughts and plan to do so into the indefinite future.
AskMefi is a great community, but statistically 10 percent of its male members will have prostate cancer. I hope the female membership will find a gentle but effective way to encourage the men around them to get tested annually, and I hope the male membership will just go out and get it done.
Well, I should have posted this much sooner: by this time tomorrow I'll be back home. But tell me, what's your experience with radioactive seed implantation? My biggest fear at this point is that I'll have to get a catheter, which according to the doc might not come out for a week.
For those of you reading on because of my PSA plea, I'm serious. Mine was caught early enough that I was a good candidate for seeds: if I'd waited longer it would have been either 5 weeks of radiation beam therapy (every day of the work week for 5 weeks) or surgery. So, I'm counting my blessings. Get a baseline PSA now and you'll be able to catch it, too. (And you should be aware that while most prostate cancer grows very slowly, some is quite aggressive.)
Why didn't I post sooner? I made the mistake of reading through previous questions, where some of the answers featured less-than-rosy results. Not for me. I mean, really not for me. If you have gloomy studies or appalling outcomes, please keep them to yourselves. I'd much rather have you lie to me instead. I am thinking only happy thoughts and plan to do so into the indefinite future.
AskMefi is a great community, but statistically 10 percent of its male members will have prostate cancer. I hope the female membership will find a gentle but effective way to encourage the men around them to get tested annually, and I hope the male membership will just go out and get it done.
This post was deleted for the following reason: I wish you luck and we're all rooting for you having as positive an experience as possible, but this is a whole bunch of not-okay-for-askme PSA askme wrapped around a kind of nominal question and isn't gonna work like this. -- cortex
I'm sure you mean well and are happy about your health but this is really, really not what Ask is for.
posted by majick at 1:39 PM on May 28, 2009
posted by majick at 1:39 PM on May 28, 2009
took me a while to see it, but yeah, there is a question buried in there.
posted by Frasermoo at 1:40 PM on May 28, 2009
posted by Frasermoo at 1:40 PM on May 28, 2009
what's your experience with radioactive seed implantation? If you have gloomy studies or appalling outcomes, please keep them to yourselves.
The question is, "Please tell me positive stories about your radioactive seed implantation."
posted by Houstonian at 1:57 PM on May 28, 2009
The question is, "Please tell me positive stories about your radioactive seed implantation."
posted by Houstonian at 1:57 PM on May 28, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by mkb at 1:38 PM on May 28, 2009