GU Symposium Day 2

What an Experience Yesterday was incredibly busy here at the 2013 Genitourinary Cancers (GU) Symposium here in Orlando, Florida. I’m here at the courtesy of the American Society of Clinical Oncology as a prostate cancer patient advocate. My sole responsibility is to sit in on as many of the presentations as I can and make that knowledge available to the people in my network – those of you reading this blog and participating in PCAP’s awareness and advocacy programs. Anyone attending this conference, especially a lay person like myself, cannot help but be struck by the level of knowledge and dedication of the men and women working in the cancer research and treatment fields. The level of scholarship is incredible, and the attendees come from all over the world. Yesterday I had breakfast with the Scandinavian contingent, lunch with the French, and a post-session beer with the Germans. Breakfast this morning was with two physicians from India. There isn’t much literature here in layman’s terms, and really understanding the research results being presented demands at least a BA in chemistry and biology and a solid understanding of statistics and statistical analysis. Thank goodness for my stats course at UCLA. Information […] read more

Robert’s 6-month PSA Report – PSA Good, Cholesterol Bad

I have a Family History of Cancer Risk If you follow this blog, you know that I am just a few weeks short of being a 10-year prostate cancer survivor. I was diagnosed in December 2002, shortly after I learned that my older sister was going into surgery for pancreatic cancer. Looking at my family history revealed that both my father and mother, lifelong smokers, died of lung cancer and lung cancer-related disease. Reduce your Risk with ProstateTracker I was lucky that my prostate cancer was detected early when is was very treatable. I’m just about to hit my 10-year survival anniversary and I owe those years to an accidental discovery of my prostate cancer. But 30,000 men every year aren’t that lucky and die of prostate cancer. We all give back to society in some fashion and my giveback is the creation of ProstateTracker; a simple tool that provides men with prostate cancer a way of detecting it as its earliest stages when it is treatable. ProstateTracker is free and anonymous. Men (or their significant others) create an account, enter the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test data and ProstateTracker plots the values and shows if these is a rise, […] read more

Will Your Prostate Cancer Recur after Surgery?

Will Your Prostate Cancer Recur after Surgery? by Robert Warren Hess If you have prostate cancer and you have your prostate removed (radical prostatectomy), can your cancer return?  If it does return, are there treatment options available? These are questions men ask when they are faced with making a decision about prostate cancer treatment. Unfortunately, the answer to the first question is “yes” while an affirmative to the second question is (fortunately) a positive sign. If you are faced with making a treatment decision about prostate cancer that involves prostatectomy, it’s a good idea to learn all you can about the procedure and other cancer treatments so you can be prepared to tackle a possible return of your prostate cancer. Chances Prostate Cancer Will Recur Overall, a man who has undergone prostatectomy for localized prostate cancer has a 10 to 30 percent chance of experiencing prostate cancer recurrence during his lifetime. Among these cases of recurrence, about half happen during the first three years after prostatectomy, another 30 percent occur from years 3 to 5 post-prostatectomy, and about 19 percent happen after year 5. Some experts say the figure of recurrence is even higher. Why Prostate Cancer May Return Prostatectomy as […] read more