Yours is a very thoughtful and considerate question, but I'm afraid there
are so many variables only very rough estimates are possible.  Here's one,
when I searched for "from prostate cancer detection to death" (without
quotes).

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20050515/1915.html

Be advised, this is lengthy and only some of your question are discussed.

Keep in touch with us, though; there are many posters here with lots of
experience.

Best to you,

Ken Bland

I can't answer those questions, but, at the risk of preaching to the
choir, want to be sure you're already doing what I've already done:
filed proper living will and power of attorney documents, including
strong final care directives. Also follow the advice in Ed Slott's book,
"Parlay Your IRA into a Family Fortune" to make sure your IRAs flow down
the family tree untaxed, saving beneficiaries scores to hundreds of
thousands of long-term dollars even on moderate-sized IRAs.

I'd bet many of us would appreciate your keeping us informed of your
findings as you continue researching this. Surely there must be data
and/or informed professional opinions available via Google. My onc once
sketched for me the shape of a nominal terminal morbidity/functionality
curve, but I can't find it at the moment. I'll let you know if I find it.

Also be aware that there are other, less obnoxious means of slowing
tumor progression being investigated, such as something called protein
4.1b (see at http://tinyurl.com/2f2c6z ). If I had a wife and kid
dependent on me, I'd probably jump at ADT when I reach that stage.

I.P.

There's no way to answer that.   I can tell you my story.

Last year, the PCa tumor in my chest began choking both my windpipe
and the blood flow to my lungs. I was in oxygen debt all the time. I
was able to work and walk short distances. I'm pretty certain that it
would have killed me in a month or two.  I'd lie in bed at night,
heart pounding, and wonder if I'd wake the next day.

ADT had me feeling better in a few weeks and near normal in a couple
months.

This year, tumors in my vertebra, bone mets, had me on the floor.  I
was literally unable to get up once the pain started.   It took
decadron and percocet to allow me to stand and walk. The MRI showed
that my vertebra were deteriorating by expanding and collapsing
against my spinal nerves.  I'm guessing I was a few months away from
permanent spinal cord injury.

External radiation from Inova's Trilogy has already reduced the pain
and my PSA.  I'm off the decadron and take a minimal amount of
percocet and ibuprofen.  The radiation has killed the tumor and my
bones will strengthen over the next few months.

This monster will try again but my hope is that the taxotere IL-6
antigen trial at JHU will whack it back before it has a chance to
start.

I'm making my worse-case scenario plans.   I'm making time to do the
things that I want to do.

My answer to your questions is,  a couple months.

-kh  with treatment though, it could be years or decades.

I don't know if your address is a much pessimistic as it is presumptuous
considering the number of men here who aren't likely to see another total
lunar eclipse.  :-(

Excellent question.  That is possibly the greatest advantage to prostate
cancer.  You cand do that!

That is, of course, subject to how tough you are and how bad it is.  One of
the shortcomings of this newsgroup is that most of its participants who have
died have been disinclined to tell us how bad things are at the end.  I can
tell you that my father fought this bastard to the very last second and I'm
thinking that he was totally dependent for a month.  It seems to me that
Howard Martin, who took no ADT or chemo, took less than two weeks to die
after being out of commission.

If you want to know how much longer you have from where  you are, we'd need
to know where you are.  What's your PSA?  How old are  you?  What's your
history?  What was your Stage and Gleason?

I do not assume that.  If you researched ADT, you would find:

Virtually every man who undergoes treatment involving current ADT meds will
experience some issues that they have never dealt with in their lives.  Some
will be mild.  Some will be moderate but might be made mild with meds.  Some
will be serious but might be made moderate with meds.  Some will be so
strong that a few will stop using them though they may die sooner.

But, nobody knows how many or which SEs he will experience or how severe
they will be or how easily they can be mitigated by other medications or
activities.

For a good list of SEs, please check out:

http://www.prostate-cancer.org/education/sidefx/Strum_ADS.html

If you have a wife and child to care for, why would you go for the short
route.  I had a wife and three children when I was diagnosed.  I now have
terminal cancer, a wife, three children, three children in law, and five
grandchildren and two on the way.  I'm having the time of my life and I'm on
ADT!!!  If you don't like it, you can always quit.

They are certainly unanswerable without more information.  But, we can give
you SWAGs if you let us know more about yourself.

Kramer's comments are dead on.

My comments could be....

I was diagnosed with advanced metastatic prostate cancer of May 8, 2004. If
there was no intervention, I'd be dead, plain and simple. With aggressive
inventation, my Medical Oncologist told me he could buy me 10 years, Today
at age 61, I am undetectible and all signs of the two areas of metastasis
are gone. Please read the short appended article, it may help you
understand:

Metastatic Prostate Cancer Survival Related to PSA Drop After Treatment
By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Aug. 29, 2006 -- How long will a man with advanced prostate cancer survive?
That may be related to how low his PSA level drops after
androgen-deprivation therapy.

The finding comes from University of Michigan researcher Maha Hussain, MD,
and colleagues. They're conducting a study of men newly diagnosed with
prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of their bodies. For men with
this deadly metastatic cancer, it is big news.

It depends on a simple blood test. Prostate cells -- especially prostate
cancer cells -- give off a marker called PSA (prostate-specific antigen).

After seven months of androgen-deprivation therapy, which is standard
treatment for metastatic prostate cancer, men with low PSA levels have only
one-fourth the chance of dying as men with higher PSA levels. Those with
undetectable PSA levels have only one-fifth the risk of death as men with
higher PSA levels.

"Low or undetectable PSA after seven months of androgen-deprivation therapy
is a powerful predictor of risk of death in patients with new metastatic
prostate cancer," Hussain said, in a news release. "These findings could
help patients avoid ineffective treatment."

PSA Test Predicts Prostate Cancer Death
Metastatic prostate cancer is usually fatal. Some patients die quickly.
Others survive for years. Until now, there's been no reliable way to tell a
patient which group he's in.

Standard treatment for spreading prostate cancer is to give a man a drug
that blocks male hormones. It's called androgen-deprivation therapy. It's
not a cure. Eventually, the body becomes resistant to the drug. But
treatment fails earlier in some men than in others.

Now there may be a way to predict this treatment failure. Hussain and
colleagues studied 1,345 men who were on androgen-deprivation therapy for
seven months.

The men whose PSA levels stayed above 4.0 ng/mL survived only 13 months on
average after the seven months of treatment. The men whose PSA levels were
4.0 ng/mL or less but more than 0.2 ng/mL survived an average 3.5 years. And
the men whose PSA levels were undetectable (less than or equal to 0.2 ng/mL)
lived for six years.

The findings could also provide what the researchers call a "window of
opportunity" to test new treatments for advanced prostate cancer.

Hussain and colleagues are now testing whether successful
androgen-deprivation therapy can be prolonged by stopping and starting
treatment after the seven-month "induction" period.

The study appears in the Aug. 20, 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical
Oncology.

Good luck,

Gourd Dancer

Dedman,

Here's a partial answer to the question of survival time cited in
the National Cancer Institute's State of the Art Treatment
Summary for Health Professionals.  See:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/prostate/healthprofessional/allpages

The citation is to this 1993 article in PubMed:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8230518?dopt=Abstract

It studied men who had failed radiation therapy (i.e., had a
rising PSA after radiation.  These men almost all had hormone
therapy.  The authors stated: "... median cancer-specific
survival of 6 years after local failure".

I presume the median would be less without hormone therapy.

So if you had local therapy with radiation and failed, and you
are willing to accept hormone therapy, you have a 50% chance of
living six years, measured from the time of the beginning of the
rise of PSA after radiation.

The study didn't talk about patients who had surgery.  I suspect
the numbers are in the same ballpark, but I don't know that.

It also didn't talk about patients who had no primary therapy at
all.  It would obviously be much harder to project a lifespan for
such men since they don't have a common starting point (e.g.,
failure of primary therapy) and could have been diagnosed at
vastly different points in the course of their disease.

If I were you I would consider seriously what the other posters
told you.  With current medical technology, you can't be cured of
your cancer, but you can extend your life, make the pain and
other symptoms much more bearable, and reduce the time of final
incapacity before death.  It can be very worthwhile to try to
find a good medical oncologist to help you with all of that.

I also think I.P.'s advice about how to prepare for death is
valuable.  In addition to his recommendations concerning legal
and financial issues, you might think about some of the
intangibles.  Are there thoughts you might like to write down or
put into a sound or video recording for your children and
grandchildren (if you have them)?  Are there treasured
possessions or keepsakes that you would like to give away to
people who you think will appreciate them, or to whom you would
like to express appreciation?  Are there things you would like to
do for your family that you haven't done yet?

Are there things you would like to do for yourself, a trip to
Alaska, a hike in the mountains, a visit to a favorite cousin,
some books that you always wanted to read, or whatever, that you
haven't done?  You may have a fatal illness.  In a sense, all of
us do.  We have known from a young age that we would die some
day.  But you're not dead yet, and there's no reason to stop
living until you have to.

Or as Stever Kramer likes to say, don't let the bastard grind you
down.

Best of luck.

  Alan