Joe
Petko and Lorraine live in Colorado, USA. He was 59 when he was diagnosed on May
17, 2007. His initial PSA was 3.2 ng/ml, his Gleason Score was 3+3=6 and he was
staged T1c. His choice of treatment was Robotic Prostatectomy. Here is his story.
Wow
what a change in life when you are given the cancer diagnosis. What did people
do before the internet? There is just a wealth of information available for research.
My biopsy was on May 11th and my doctor called me with the results on May 17th.
12 core samples were taken and one was identified as cancerous 3 + 3 Gleason.
About a week later I had an appointment to review my options. The treatment options
included, surgery, seeds, external beam radiation, cryosurgery and watchful waiting.
Unfortunately,
around this time it was discovered that I had a very large kidney stone which
required attention first so that its potential for moving down the urinary tract
would not cause damage through that area following surgery or radiation treatment.
I had lithotripsy performed in mid June. That is a procedure where you are given
general anaesthesia and then bombarded with sound waves to break up the stone.
It worked but I had several days of rather painful passing of some of the stone
pieces.
I moved on to further investigation of treatments which involved
a lot of research, talking to people and meeting with doctors. I had 2 appointments
with radiation oncologists. I even went to Johns Hopkins to speak to one of their
doctors. I have attended a local support group since that time and have been monitoring
the Yahoo Groups Prostate Cancer Group which has been for the most part helpful.
In
my investigation on the internet, I found where UCLA had done a research project
on quality of life after prostate cancer treatment. A report was issued by a research
doctor who did not perform any of the treatments and he found that at the end
of two years, the quality of life tended to even out between, surgery, seeds and
radiation. That is not to say that the side effects were not different at times
during those 2 years. In my mind that sort of levelled the playing field.
I
considered most of the therapies before making a decision. I had been told that
I would need to first have a thermal microwave treatment should I choose radiation
or seeds because of my lower urinary tract symptoms. Doubling up on procedures
was not attractive to me. Long airplane trips shortly following surgery was also
ill advised because of the increased risk of blood clots. The proton beam treatment
sounded like it had great promise, but I am still working and do not live near
any of the locations which provide that treatment. I had even researched HIFU
and have in fact talked to a couple people in my local support group but they
have both had continuing difficulties after having that procedure done outside
this country.
It seemed like my decision was narrowing down to either surgery
or brachytherapy. A couple of the doctors confirmed that the cure rates after
10 years seemed to be identical and the UCLA report seemed to suggest that after
two years the side effects would be similar. However the doctors suggested that
after 12 years a divergent pattern begins where the surgery cure rate ends higher.
I am still fairly young and have a statistical life expectancy of greater than
25 more years so I thought this was of some value. However, for me the real reason
was I wanted some finality to this and removing the gland and getting the pathology
was of greater interest to me. I was leaning heavily to surgery.
During
the research, what I had read about the da Vinci robotic procedure interested
me. I also listened to those in the support groups talk about finding a very experienced
doctor regardless of the procedure so I zeroed in on robotic surgery. After getting
some recommendations, I discovered a doctor who had done 1,200 open surgeries
and then after learning the techniques of the robotic surgery had done 400 of
those. After meeting and talking with this doctor I was convinced that this was
the way to go for me. The doctor was very passionate about what he did and about
his quest for trying to improve on the results of the surgery for his patients.
While the doctors, in general, claim that robotic surgery is no better than open,
I found that the doctors who perform it don't believe that. Since the robotic
procedure has only been done for about 5 years there are no studies published
that confirm the fact, but you can tell from discussion with doctors that have
taken the time to learn the new procedure, that they believe complications are
far fewer, recovery is faster and success rates are really good.
I had
robotic surgery on November 13th in Denver and I believe with very good success.
I will write again and talk about my experiences since that time.
Joe's
e-mail address is: jbpetko@hotmail.com
