Welcome! If you're in the PCa boat, we're sorry, but glad that you're reaching out for information from a patient-centered support community.
This year, 2015, according to reliable statistics, some 220,800 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and some 27,540 men will die of this disease. If you read medical news, you'll find these and related statistics intoned in virtually every research article.
My husband hated seeing those numbers time and again in articles he read while fighting advanced, aggressive PCa. I'm salting a few here as a way of making up for skipping the ritualistic mantra elsewhere.
This website is a re-start of PSA Rising (psa-rising.com), which we began on the internet almost twenty years ago, in 1997. At that time in the USA, information for patients and their families was sparse and hard to get hold of. Research into prostate cancer was limited. Every year some 40,000 men were dying of prostate cancer.
Today, out of every hundred men diagnosed with prostate cancer, 99 (to be precise, 98.9%) will survive for at least 5 years. Don't be too impressed by this in relation to the minority dealing with currently lethal strains of prostate cancer. Like others in that minority in his generation -- men in their late forties and early to mid-fifties dealing with aggressive prostate cancer -- Norman outlived his prognosis. He survived for 11 years. But his last several years, bravely fought, were hard won.
Second, and more positively, millions of men today do survive the disease. Of the over two and half million men who are now living with prostate cancer, most will die of other age-related conditions, more like "natural causes." A new era of cancer survival is under way. Living with prostate cancer and after prostate cancer is challenging, of course, as newly diagnosed people may surmise.
As one specialist puts it, "The growing number of cancer survivors has focused interest on assessing survivors' [health related quality of life]." Ideally, surviving cancer would be like returning to life before the diagnosis and forging ahead. Some people aim at a heroic progress (as Lance Armstrong imagined for himself) into a super-healthy lifestyle, a daily race for the cure.
Researchers only recently began measuring longterm real life outcomes and experiences on a mass scale. They are starting to sift through thousands of responses to questionnaires about diminished sexual function and/or sexual interest, hormone-deprivation treatment related symptoms and urinary and/or bowel related symptoms. They are examining real, longterm outcomes of treatment choices. They are listening closely to how patients and partners talk to one another about cancer-related concerns and whether this "can either facilitate or reduce relationship closeness."
How much of this research impacts patients themselves, improves their survival chances and quality of life and the quality of life of their intimate partners?
Newly diagnosed men are expected to make choices despite riding an emotional roller-coaster. One way of keeping stress at a distance is to fixate on searching for good news, or any news. So in comes a daily avalanche of medical news about "breakthrough" advances, some genuine. How to keep up?
Machines can take in information and churn it out. Often, the best humans can do is try to chunk things down mindfully and prioritize according to their personal values and needs. I hope some of the news gathered on this site, however incomplete, will be relevant and helpful to visitors. The aim is to take reliable evidence-based opinions as building blocks for encouragement and hope.
Thank you for dropping by. Please keep in mind, PSA Rising never claims to replace or substitute for any medical or health authority. And this site is always open to correction.
References:
SEER Stat Fact Sheets: Prostate Cancer
Cancer-Related Communication, Relationship Intimacy, and Psychological Distress Among Couples Coping with Localized Prostate Cancer J Cancer Surviv. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 Mar 1.Sharon Manne & team,
Fox Chase Cancer Center Cancer Prevention and Control Cheltenham, PA, and team.
Psychometric evaluation of the EORTC QLQ-PR25 questionnaire in assessing health-related quality of life in prostate cancer survivors: a curate's egg. Qual Life Res. 2015 Mar 20.O'Leary E & team.
Long-term health-related quality of life of prostate cancer survivors varies by primary treatment. Results from the PiCTure (Prostate Cancer Treatment, your experience) study BMJ Open 2015, FJ Drummond and team.