Patients reflect on the importance of taking time to understand all available treatment options, seeking second opinions, and choosing a treatment plan based on their individual diagnosis, priorities, and long-term goals. They encourage patients to educate themselves, ask questions, consider clinical trials and support groups, and stay physically and mentally engaged throughout the prostate cancer journey.

Brad Goverman:

And so in my first session with Dr. D'Amico, I also challenged him. I said, "What about continuing active surveillance as an option?" And he basically reiterated what Dr. Kibel had said and that it's given your family history, the progression, the PSA levels, I would recommend you do something and not continue active surveillance. So that was the first hurdle for me, was to kind of get over going from active surveillance into dealing with some kind of a more aggressive therapy. And then from there it was digging deep in both of those options and understanding them more than I did.

And by the way, one of the most important resources for me was YouTube. When I was looking at Dr. Kibel and Dr. D'Amico, both of them are fairly well known experts and have given lectures at conferences. And Dr. Kibel even, he's considered one of the foremost experts in the use of robotics or da Vinci robotics for performing surgery. I actually watched one of his surgeries on YouTube. That was extremely helpful to me to understand what does it entail? What does it actually do?

And then on the other side, on the radiation side, I was also watching YouTube videos and there was particularly a Dr. Schultz who really was very, very helpful to me in understanding the differences between surgery and radiation, the pros and cons of each one. And he really was enlightening in terms of how far radiation therapy had advanced over the last 15 years and changed my thinking because I originally had gone into this based on my sister's reaction and my own feelings that I was young enough where surgery probably made sense, just take it out and not worry about it anymore and deal with the side effects. But Dr. Schultz's videos on YouTube really changed my perception.

And what I learned from that is that the outcomes for both surgery and radiation were pretty much the same and that the side effects were probably a little bit better, less severe, I should say, in the radiation world than it is in the surgery world.

I hadn't made a final decision, but watching those videos really turned my thinking around away from being just thinking I'm going to do surgery and get it over with versus, well, let's think harder about this. Let's consider the advances. Let's consider the pros and cons of the side effects from each of these therapies. And when I combine all that together, I really changed my mind and I decided to go down the radiation therapy path.

And in hindsight and kind of retrospect, now it's only been a year out or close to a year out. So this proof's still in the pudding for me and outcomes are still years away. I have to look at this thing in more of a long-term picture. But in hindsight, I think I made a good decision for me personally and we'll see how that works out.

But another thing that helped turn me around on therapy was when I met with Dr. D'Amico, I asked him about his specific track record when it came to outcomes and he gave me a very interesting statistic. He said to me, "I've had 26,000 patients that have gone through radiation therapy and out of 26,000 patients, I have had only seven that have had severe recurrence of cancer."

To me, that was a pretty amazing statistic and really helped also convince my thinking at that point to go down the radiation path for me.

Gogs Gagnon:

So here I was in the doctor's office getting the results of my prostate biopsy and when I heard the word cancer, that's when I immediately shut down. I immediately thought the worst and I can no longer process any of the information of the doctors telling me. And I kind of panicked and I didn't realize I was in shock and first thing I thought of was I wanted to get rid of it and I wanted to do surgery without understanding anything about my cancer, without understanding what my Gleason score was, not even understanding if the cancer had spread, not realizing that there's more tests to be done, not realizing that there's many options to consider, not realizing that there's many other doctors that I should talk to. Here I am assuming the worst.

Even my doctor told me to slow down. He gave me a whole bunch of information. He said there's more tests that we need to do. And he recommended that I speak to a radiation oncologist. He recommended that I go to a cancer clinic and speak with a nurse navigator.

I did those things, but I think because I had this urgent need to get rid of it or I felt I had this urgent need to get rid of it, I think in the back of my mind, I already made that decision to have surgery. I don't think I had an open mind when I made that decision.

After the surgery, I woke up and it was quite real at that point. You see, when you're making decisions, especially when you're in shock and you don't have all the facts and it doesn't perhaps seem so real until you wake up and yeah, you had the surgery and this is real and there's no going back. And that's what's so important that to realize this before you make that decision, it's a, you're committed. Once you've had whatever treatment you've decided to have, there's really no going back.

Another reason why it's so important to take your time with the decision and make sure you understand all the pros and cons and also understand what the side effects may be and if you're willing to live with those side effects as well. Just because one treatment option works for one person doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for another. Every case is so different and that's why it's so important to have a good understanding of your case and understand what the options are that are best suited for you.

But I tell you, if my surgery was unsuccessful, I would have not only regretted it, but I probably would have just hated myself for not taking the time, not doing my homework, not doing my diligence to ensure that I made that best decision for me. Because I was thinking, if I had done my homework, if I had really spoke to a radiation oncologist and went to the cancer clinic, talked to the nurse advocate, went to support groups, talked to other people, went through it and really felt that I understood all the options, all the pros and cons and really understood my specific case, then if I made that best decision, if that decision had failed or if that treatment had failed, then at least I would be in a position to know that I did everything I could to make that best decision rather than just going in and hoping for the best.

One thing that I didn't realize is not only are there a lot of options, but there's also a lot of clinical trials as well. I didn't realize that, I assumed, wrongly assumed that clinical trials are for secondary treatments or follow-up treatments, but it's quite possible that clinical trials could be a primary treatment as well. So just to keep a real open mind to what's out there.

And also make sure that you speak to more than one doctor and don't feel embarrassed to ask for a second opinion or to get a second opinion. It's something your doctor should encourage and should want you to do. So it's very important not to just go with the first treatment that you're most familiar with.

So, I think that's the big one, is understanding there's lots of treatment options and you get multiple opinions and to join a support group to get a bond base going of knowledge.

Mike Hoppel:

I didn't want to wait and see because that was an option. I didn't want to be down the road six or eight or 10 months and then we are going to do the removal of it. I said, "No, this is what I want to do." I let them know that I have a plan because they warned me about, "Please don't become a couch potato and just sit around and think about it because the depression and all the fears in your head will multiply." So I did give them my game plan. I said, "I intend to run every day during the treatment at least a 5K," but really it was more like about four and a half mil to about eight miles a day every day and that's well over a hundred right now. My PSA numbers were, I don't even remember what the numbers were.

They were very, very, very, very elevated and the size of the prostate was like four times what it normally was. It was just very, very large and we knew that when we went into surgery and had the hip surgery and whenever I went home without peeing, then that triggered the whole thing and got it at the front of the line there.

And so we quickly decided to go ahead and move forward like within two weeks. I said, no, they wanted to wait for several months. I said, "No, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right now. We're going to get this over with." And they moved very fast on it.

There were many MRIs where they did some tests and they, well, they came back with the fact that there were three major areas that they were concerned about. Two of them were definitely critical and one they didn't know, but three of them, I didn't feel we had a choice to do anything but make a decision to take it out. But they were very thorough. They sent me to each one of these. "This is your... We can treat it with this type of treatment."

So this happened at a really great time of year called Thanksgiving Day, day before Thanksgiving, great time. They did take it out.