If you have been reading the previous sections you should have enough knowledge and information to consider the next step - choosing the treatment.

You should be thinking of what kind of treatment you should do. First let me say to you that usually there is no hurry to make that selection. DO NOT let any doctor rush you to making a treatment decision. Prostate cancer is very slow growing. At this point you have had it for 6 to 10 years and maybe longer. What difference will a few months make. The only time that you might want to hurry down the treatment path would be if you had a Gleason total Score of 8,9,or 10 and a PSA over 20 or a T Stage of T4. With these it is almost certain that your cancer is sytemic and you have to consider advanced systemic treatment that treats the cancer in your prostate as well as the possibility of cancer in your body.

Your conventional treatments are as follows:

  Brachytherapy / Seed Implants

  High Dose Radiation (HDR)

  Hormonal Ablation Treatment

  Radiation Therapy (External Beam)

  Surgical Removal (RP) of the prostate

In addition you can consider:

  Watchful Waiting

  Alternative/Supplemental Medicine

STEP 1 - Gather Information

Lets start with knowing where you stand.  One more thing before you get started on the PC-Digest form. If you know what your PSA, Gleason (this would be a number like 3+3=6) and Clinical Staging score (this would be a number like T1c) is we need the numbers below. Click on and go to Partin Tables and check the chart until you find your scores. This will give you four numbers, please write them down on a piece of paper you will need them on the form below. Write them in this order:

  Prediction of Organ-Confined Disease:

  Prediction of Established Capsular Penetration:

  Prediction of Seminal Vesicle Involvement:

  Prediction of Lymph Node Involvement:

Obtain all of the information you can on your diagnosis.  Remember you have a right to all reports that are prepared for your diagnosis.  There was a list of information you need - review it by clicking "here".

You will want to read about Vitamins and supplements "here".

You want to be aware of interactions between drugs, supplements, vitamins, etc.  Click "here" to go to the section.

All of the above should be put in a three ring binder in date order.  YOu will use this many times in the process of fighting this disease.

Step 2 - PIcking Your Doctor

This is one of the most difficult decisions you have to make.

ALWAYS REMEMBER

The skill of the doctor doing the procedure is far more important than the procedure itself. The procedure will be a success or it will fail based on this skill. You are betting your life on this skill, make sure you get the best available. If you have to travel - ask yourself "Is my life worth it?" than travel. Find the docs that have proof through published papers in leading medical journals.

Achieving good results with any treatment requires substantial technical skill. The technical and clinical results can vary substantially from one practitioner to another. You must be sure that the doctor you pick is the most qualified for your treatment choice.

How do you find these doctors? There is really only one sure way that we have to pick these docs. This is through their publication in peer reviewed medical journals their treatment and the results. This is the only sure way that we have to measure the success of the doctor. Sure not all docs submit papers to these medical journals and sure they "might" be as competent as the ones we list as "Centers of Excellence" but we simply do not know. Patients will tell you that their doctors is the best, doctors will tell you that the doc down the hall or down the street is best, don't believe them until you check them out. Don't take anyone's word about doctors because it is your life that your are betting on.

I have tried to list a number of doctors that have good reputations and who publish or are accepted by the medical profession as a whole as being a "Center of Excellence". You can see this list by going to Physician "Artists" of Excellence .

Step 3:  Searching for Information:

The more information you get the better able you are to make a decision about anything.

At this point you may be feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information you have received and what is on this web site. Don't worry - we all went through that process - t is part of the learning process. It will all begin to come together at some point.

The World Wide Web on the internet is one of the most valuable tools that has become available to us in the history of this country. For the first time we have at our fingertips information on every subject we want and as much as we want. We can talk to experts, other people like ourselves, pass along information that we have learned, etc., etc., etc.

It is simply marvelous.

With that in mind there has been many ways devised to search the millions of pages out there. These software programs are called "search engines" - Google is the most Popular.  You can go there and put in any words you want and click on a button and within a short period of time you will get a ton of information that you can read. For example if you put in "prostate cancer" you would get thousands of pages. However if you were interested in Seed Implants you could put "Brachytherapy" and get less pages to look at.

We have our own search engine that you can use to search the pages of this site.  See the "Site Search" at the top of every page.  They are dedicated to only prostate cancer and should have the information you might want. 

In addition we have a "RSS / Blogs /Books/ Links?" section that makes it easier to search.  There is a lot of information obtainable there.  Click "here" to go to that section.

You can come back to the search pages as often as you like. I would recommend that you bookmark them for your ease of return.