I'm sorry to hear of your cancer Envo.

Your website is interesting and well done, however I disagree
with your view that routine PSA testing is not worthwhile.
Although it is true that cancers that will not become life
threatening are often discovered and sometimes treated,
I think that is not caused by having too much information,
but by not having enough.  A rising PSA is suspicious of
cancer but, if it is still close to the normal range, it doesn't
prove cancer and doesn't prove that the cancer is
dangerous.

In your own case, your cancer was apparently not discovered
until it was too late for primary treatment.  I wonder if
that would have been the case if you had gotten PSA tests
every year, especially after you first began to have
urinary symptoms.  If I'm reading your history correctly,
you were tested in 1997 and not again until six years later
in 2003.  They told you your PSA was normal in 1997, though
it sounds like either they didn't tell you the actual numbers,
or else you've forgotten them.  It was not normal in 2003
and the cancer had already spread beyond the prostate.

For most men, there is a rate of increase of PSA which
can tell even more than the PSA itself about whether cancer
is growing.  It is also possible to get a "free PSA" test
that tells how much of the PSA protein is bound to other
proteins and how much is free - another indicator of the
danger.

We can never know for sure, but it seems very possible
that if your PSA had been monitored every year an
alarming rate would have been seen, and possibly an
alarming free PSA - all before the cancer spread beyond
the prostate.

I don't say all this to make you feel bad or to attack your
doctors.  I say it because you are advocating no PSA
tests on your website and I'm not sure the advice you are
giving to others (even though it is the opinion of many in
the British and some in the American medical profession)
is correct.

But, on other topics, let me congratulate you on the birth
of your new granddaughter!

I'm also glad to hear of your 0.1 PSA report.  Some men
are able to benefit from hormone therapy for many years.
I hope you are one of them.

Best of luck to you.

   Alan