Question:
Positive4U,
You are right. Once you set your course, the initial anxiety will be gone.
All Sevens,
Thanks for your information about Dr. Peter Carroll. Yes, Dr. Carroll will be my surgen.
I will share it when I am done with him.
John in CA,
Thanks for your research on the Robotic Laparoscopic and appropriate ways to dig information from these institutions.
Answer:
I have been scheduled to have the surgery on June 27th next monday. Everything is set in motion. But then miracally, I got call this morning from my doctor of UCSF that the surgery should be cancelled because UCSF's pathologist reviwed the biopsy's slidse and got conclusion that there is no cancer which is different from another pathologist at LA who gave me the cancer opinion. They suggest I should re-do the biopsy for another 3 months at their place. It's kind of good news but it also confused me. Which side should I believe ?
Answer:
That is confusing, but if you can't get two pathologists to agree on a positive diagnosis, it's best to hold off on surgery. False positives do occur, even though they are rare. It must be tough on you to be in this ambiguous situation, but it is much tougher on the men who did not find out that they were false positive until after their surgery.
I think your choices are to either send your slides to some place like Hopkins and get a third opinion, or to repeat the biopsy. If you want to do the first thing, you can call Johns Hopkins Urology Department on Monday-- they do the second opinion thing all the time, and their pathologists specialize in prostate cancer diagnosis. On the other hand, I would think that UCSF has a top notch pathology department. How about your first pathologist, do they handle a lot of prostate cancer cases?
Answer:
Hi ALL Sevens,
Thanks for your suggestion to get third opinion from Hoskins. I did not know the tract records of my first pathologist, Pathology Inc., at Torrance, CA. But I do know that UCSF handles 20 cases of prostate biopsy per day which is pretty good volume. UCSF called it "atypi" small acinar proliferation, suspicious but not dianostic for adenocarcinoma. It's kind of temporary relief, but I still need to work on it.
Answer:
Monwei,
Wow, sounds very much like a similar situation I had back in March where the "specialists" couldn't agree while looking at the same test results. It's nerve racking for sure, but this does give you the opportunity to step back, relax a bit, take your time doing research and in three months have the biopsy repeated at UCSF.
In the meantime, may I suggest you take this time to improve your diet, your physical conditioning and mental toughness (not that any of that is out of whack) so that on the chance that the PC diagnosis does come back ... you will be ready to face it square on.
It just very well may be that you are in the earliest stages of something "suspiciously" taking place in the prostate and the next three months may definitively prove to assist the docs to make the correct diagnosis without all the confusion. Personally, I would toss the first test results and do the wait & see routine for the next 3 months, in my ever so humble opinion. Please keep us informed and here's hoping that you get a clean bill of health the next time around! Best wishes!
Thom in VA