I would do testing every year. The consensus is a 0.75 of a point
increase per year would be cause to get suspicious.
Get a good uro to do that DRE.

B.A.

"Dick Smith" asked

All in a period of about six weeks, five or six physicians gave me the
finger. All knew my biopsy showed significant cancer, and were looking for
signs of its boundaries. Most were oncologists, including four urologists.
Only one perceived any anomaly, and that was very slight.

Hmmm . . . one in 6 . . . classic Russian roulette, but in reverse. Just
hope you find the RIGHT finger at an EARLY moment.

But with your awareness, your early examinations, and your rapidly
increasing expertise, any PC is highly unlikely to escape your notice until
it's escaped the kennel. Your dad's situation merely raises your odds of
acquiring PC; it doesn't doom you to catch PC and certainly doesn't doom you
to your dad's fate. Given your level of PC awareness, several other dreadful
diseases bear a greater threat to you.

On THAT pleasant thought . . .

I.P.
Now stop that smoking and move out of McDonald's.

Dick,

Glad to hear your PSA is level.  You now have a pretty good baseline.  Your
healthy PSA, at 38-years-old, is about 1.0.  You should be able to expect
that over the next thirty or forty years, it will rise to 4.0 or 5.0.  Keep
getting tested and put PCa at the back of your mind.

As to fingers, I recently had a foreign car repair shop owner tell me that
the IAC Valve on my Ford F150 was shot.  He heard the truck stall as I
pulled into his lot.  I took the truck to a Ford dealership and on the
second day, they diagnosed my problems as an IAC valve.  During 1999, an ER
doc did not feel anything on my prostate.  One year later, I had a PSA/DRE
and the doc sent me to a urologist after the PSA results came back.  The
urologist felt "something funny".  My PSA was 16 and my prostate was T3c.
Moral of the story:  It's the finger of the man (or woman), not what it says
on the certificate in the office.  You want a finger that has penetrated a
lot of rectums and successfully felt nodules when they were there.

As to your father's cancer, I have mentioned before that there is no known
connection between an older father and a younger son getting PCa.  If your
father had been in his 40s, that might have had an indication on your PCa.
As it is, you have a chance at PCa only because every male does.

...

I figure it this way.  There are thousands of things that can kill us.
For each of them, there is a specialist who knows better than a
general practitioner how to diagnose it.  A cardiologist can read your
electrocardiogram better than your GP.  An endocrinologist can
interpret your blood sugar and hormone levels better.  A lung
specialist can interpret your chest X-rays better, and so on.

But, in the absence of some specific evidence of a problem, how
much sense would it make to make appointments with 50
specialists a year for checkups - even apart from the outrageous
cost?

Since you have no evidence of a problem, I'd stick with the G.P.

   Alan

I'm always really glad to see the consistantly great advice given by the
great guys here.

PCa is NOT a funny topic but they manage to toss in homey little 'terms
of amusement' without minimizing the seriousness of the question.

I.P mentions 'getting the finger'.

Steve K. talks about how...the educated finger has been in a lot of
rectums.

And if I may...Brian said something in an earlier thread (I'm not going
there)...about us not getting into a pissing contest...

well, it made me think of the old adages...

"Never leave your wife or girlfriend with a guy named 'Snake'."

"Don't bring a knife to a gunfight", and the one that applies here the
most...

"Never get into a pissing contest with a guy named 'I.P. Freely' "

Be well,

Ron B.

Chicago