Charlie's Story

Ethnicity
White British
Age
70-79
Work
Retired
Sexual Orientation
Straight
Geography
South West
Relationship status
Married/In a Civil Partnership

Radical Prostatectomy (Surgery)

Tips and advice for any mental and emotional side effects of treatment

Received some counselling from FORCE, a local cancer charity, but if you have a specialist prostate cancer group in your area (which I don't), I think it might help to talk to other people that have had the same treatment

How this treatment impacted my life the most

The main cause of worry for me is that even after 6 years, I am still on 3 monthly PSA tests. My hospital uses an alert level of 0.1 and I have never been below the level of 0.01 which I believe some hospitals use. I have reached the alert level 3 times but my PSA levels then went down again. My consultant thinks that they left a small piece of benign prostate behind on doing nerve sparing but as she says she cannot guarantee this. Obviously, this is a constant source of worry to me. I will always wonder if the nerve sparing was worthwhile.

If I had to do it all over again, would I choose the same treatment?

Yes

Why did I give this answer?

It seemed right for me at the time - might have not gone for nerve sparing. With what I know from other people, I might have considered Brachytherapy had it been offered to me.

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