Advice from Dr. William Lynes
Board Certified Urologist

My advice to all CAP patients is the following:

1. Prostate cancer being a slow growing cancer,
gives one the luxury of taking your time in your
decision.

2. Consider all scenarios when you make this
decision. We assume that our choice will lead to
a good out come, that is cure with minimal side
effects. We must realize that poor out comes may
occur as well. You must be able to live with
these as well. This would include be the
possibility of not being cured of our cancer, and
having adverse side effects of the therapy. It
could be a sad scenario for a man who is perhaps
not destined to die of prostate cancer, who under
goes therapy and is not cured, and lives the rest
of his life with a bad side effect of therapy.

We must be able to live with the good and bad out
comes.

3. Realize that the out come of therapy in others
does not mean that you will have the same out
come. We tend to see someone who had say
radiotherapy and did well, and use that as an
example of what will happen to us. To really get
a good idea of possible outcomes we have to speak
to hundreds of people so treated. No one can do
this. Talk to others, but realize that my
experience may be totally different.

4. Realize that you know more about prostate
cancer than anyone you know. Family members and
friends are well intended, but they work from the
experience of other cancers. They feel that if
not cured of prostate cancer, you will die of this
disease. Listen to their advice, but you have to
weigh all the decisions and information.

5. Realize that your decision comes down to a gut
level. The decision of what treatment to have is
really an educated guess, because no one but God
knows the future.

6. Use a reasonable amount of time, and then make
your decision and live with it. Realize that you
made the best possible decision at the time, and
do not look back with regret.

7. While one could change ones mind about having
a particular therapy, this in general is a poor
idea. Make your decision and live with it.
Several years later is not a good time to begin
considering attentive curative therapy. The
cancer is larger, less likely to be cured, and you
are older, your life expectancy is shorter.
Waiting has just magnified the difficult decision.

On my web site under updates in urology, you will
find an article entitled "The Prostate Cancer
Primer". This discusses basic CAP information and
treatment decisions. It is only for the price of
a click, I.E. free.

William Lynes, MD.
Urologist
E-Mail: wlynes@alphainfo.com
http://users.alphainfo.com/wlynes