Let's look at it this way: Think Steve Fossett, who just landed in Kansas,
is gonna ground his lifestyle with debilitating SEs just to stretch his
heartbeat by a few months?

I.P.

No, my crusade, because I'm still in the midst of finalizing that decision,
is that people become aware of the whole spectrum of treatments and choices
and SEs. Too many people, here and in doctors' offices, are being told fairy
tales, according to me and according to reports, clinical trials, and large
panels of experts around the world. I HAVE mentioned the SEs of RT, for
example, in particular the FACTS that they tend to increase with time for
many years and threaten urological and bowel problems more than the other
options, yet STILL see uninformed people right here denying those facts to
newbies. I happen to discuss ADT SEs more because I know more about them
than I do the other options, am actively trying to decide whether to accept
ADT, have spent several hundred hours researching it to that end, and still
see newbies being told here and across the world that adjuvant ADT adds
years of bliss to our lives. Sorry, guys . . . it ain't bliss and it ain't
years. We don't have to let PC run or ruin our lives until it gives us no
choice, and even then we STILL have choices . . . TBD.

Don't worry, folks . . . as soon as my decision is final, I hope to put all
this PC crap behind me, get on with what's left of my life, let these
cancers do what the hell they want on autopilot while I measure their status
quarterly, and divert my time from this soapbox to pursuits put on back
burners since last summer. At that time some of you are free to tell newbies
anything you wish without my reality checks based on Strum, Walsh, Harvard,
Mayo, ACS, NIH, Lange, etc. And only INFORMED opinions are truly valid,
whether it's PC treatment or an election. Uninformed or misinformed opinions
are just knee-jerks, and in the case of PC, can be disastrous.

Sure, puddles can be an SE of surgery. I've never said surgery is
"preferable" to other treatments; I try to deal in facts, not judgements.
It's all about informed choices based on knowledge and personal criteria.
(But IMO yellow puddles beat the hell out of bloody, brown, lumpy, painful,
stinky puddles any day.) You've been very fortunate to have minimal SEs,
with just mild hot flashes and some anemia corrected by B-12, plus fatigue
which must be pretty minimal as it wasn't even mentioned until months after
our initial SE description. If your experience were the norm, my decisions
and my objections to the Fairy Tale would be very different. If you HAD
"experienced the expected SEs of both the ADT and those of brachytherapy",
you'd have a slew of serious SEs that would change most people's tune
significantly, according to Strum's analyses of the ADT Syndrome and the
many who agree with him.

I.P.

....  

I'll be a little more direct.  I did 8 months of Lupron, 25 days of
IMRT, and Palladium-103 Seeds last year.   The side effects were
extremely mild.  

I experienced occasional hot flashes and sweats.  I was tired and
dragging during the day after the 3rd week of IMRT.  After the
seeding, I was peeing about every 2 hours and getting up 2 and 3
times a night to go.  I was exhausted for the first 3 months post
seeding.  It was a strain to go to the grocery store.  

I have a desk job so the fatigue did not impact my work.   I was
irritable and argumentative but as I have a self-effacing and
eccentric programmer personality, no one noticed.  I asked and
people uniformly said they hadn't noticed anything.

At seeding+4 months, my stamina was coming back.  

I'm at seeding+5 months now and I get up once a night.  I can run up
3 flights of stairs without feeling like collapsing.

My primary complaint is the 300 fasting blood sugar.  I suspect
that the Lupron is responsible for it but I am taking those numbers
seriously.  My primary care doc started me on glucophage.  

Pre-Lupron, my worse fasting blood sugar was 130 but at 5'7", 197
pounds and 57 years old, a 130 is a big whoop, just a message to
lose some weight.

300, after losing 12 pounds, is a serious number.

My bloodwork shows high triglycerides and a blood count at the low
end of normal.   I am taking B-12 and a multi-vitamin.  I'm also
gradually taking the weight off.  I'm down to 185 now, having lost
about a pound a month for the last year.

I'm hopeful that the rad and lupron has beaten back the cancer.  

I come here and read I.P. and other folk's stuff about surgery,
catheters, Kegels, groin pain for weeks, and incontinence as the way
to go.  

And, oh, the side effects from Rad, well, they'll show up
eventually.

Well, I flat don't see it.

If surgery works for you, great.  

Great.  But don't imagineer that the side effects from rad or lupron
are worse than they are or that a year or two or permanent
incontinence from surgery is not a big deal.  It is a big deal.

Both my rad doc and urologist said that rad, specifically seeding,
was replacing radical prostectomy as the treatment of choice.  

My rad doc said that rad's survival numbers are "good", "as good as
surgery".  My uro said that his patients are choosing rad because
there are "mild side effects" and the "recovery is easy".

I walked out of the outpatient center 3 hours after checking in for
the seeding.  I had a bandaid on my arm and on my back but they
didn't think I needed one between my legs.  

I could tell that something had happened but there was no pain.  My
driver pulled up, I said good bye to the recovery nurse who was
standing with me.  I got in the car and we drove off.  

It was that easy.

I had read on the Internet, maybe at seedpods, about a guy who was
up in a tree the day after his seeding.  He was cutting off limbs
with a chainsaw.  I could-a done that.

I'm also realistic about this.  There are no guarentees in life.
None.  Well, except we'll all die some day.  

While I am optimistic and hopeful that my PSA will stay < 0.1, I
know that it could start rising.  

As the Lupron wears off, my ability to function as a man might not
return.  Hey, I'm 58 now.  I don't compete in keep-it-up-all-night
contests.  At 58, balding, with a Lupron belly, 5 year old car, and
the shabby clothes of an aging computer programmer, I don't have
Angelina Jollie look-alikes chasing me.

I'm hopeful here too but if I need to take Vitamin-V, oh well.

I was "lucky".  My primary doc has a seed-patient who has real
trouble with his uretha.  They're going to roto-rooter him when he
gets stronger.  It happens. Things can go wrong.

My rad doc said that in the last 10 years and thousands of
rad-patients, they had ONE guy where they think the radiation burned
his colon. No problems since they instituted the diet and post-rad
directives.

The rad-nurse put the fear of a colon bypass in us, I stuck to the
diet and took the colace as directed.   Roast turkey, mashed
potatoes and gravy, well cooked green beans, pumpkin pie with
whipped cream, what hard duty, cry me a river.  It's like Martha
"mad dog" Stewart doing home detention at her 40 million dollar
estate.  Yeah, that'll show her.

After the rad doc explained the risks and the odds, I made my
decision, "hey, I drive on the beltway every day, I know what life
threatening means."  

Again, I'm not saying that rad is perfect or without risk.  Nothing
in life is without risk.  

I'm not saying that surgery is horrible, I have no direct experience
with it.  

I am glad I decided to skip the groin pain and the incontinence that
surgical patients discuss here.  That was my decision after having
done my research.

It is disingenuous for surgical patients to hint that, "just wait,
the rad side effects will eventually prove to be far worse
than a year or two of incontinence and the surgical pain." or
speculate that surgery is more certain than rad.  The Gaussian
field of the high energy photons might kill cancer that the surgery
will miss.  You take your chances either way.

My doc just called.   PSA at 5 months, 2 weeks post seeding is again
undetectable.  < 0.1 on the printout.

Time to celebrate.