Prostate Cancer Symptoms

Learn fast all prostate cancer symptoms, how it is diagnosed and how others have dealt with prostate cancer. Share you cancer story to help others recognizing as early as possible the prostate cancer symptoms! The faster cancer is recognized, the better your chances for curing cancer.

4 clearly explained prostate cancer cures you can choose from when you want to cure your prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer treatment options are getting more and better, so the survival rate for prostate cancer is constantly improving. This is true for prostate cancer treatments in all stages except a metastasised prostate cancer.

Advanced prostate cancer treatments for a metastasised or spread prostate cancer however have no high survival rate outcome.

4 possible prostate cancer cures

We illustrated the 4 possible prostate cancer cures in the picture above and more detailed below.

Prostate cancer options range from no prostate cancer treatments to:

• hormonal treatment for prostate cancer
   
• internal or external Radiation treatment

Option 1: No prostate cancer treatment

An 80-year old man has the option not to treat his prostate cancer and live "happily ever after".

Since prostate cancer is slow-growing, especially in older men, the costs and side-effects of treating prostate cancer could be

much higher than living with the cancer.

Most likely these kind of prostate cancer patients will die of old age, and not because of their cancer.

Option 2: Hormonal treatment for prostate cancer

During this kind of prostate cancer treatment, the patient will take medicines to stop testosterone production.

The idea behind this prostate cancer cure is that the growth of the prostate is very dependent on testosterone.

The oral medicines you will be given are the so called anti-androgen drugs. These drugs will block the action of testosterone on the prostate gland and are sold under the following names:

• Bicalutamide (marketed as Casodex ®, Cosudex ®, Calutide ®, Kalumid ®)
   
• Flutamide (marketed as Eulexin ®, Cytomid ®)
   
• Nilutamide (marketed as Nilandron ®)

Young men "high on testosterone" won’t be eager to opt for this solution as it will lower their typical male testosterone determined qualities and features.

In my opinion it would be silly to reject a possible penile dysfunction when the hormonal treatment will cure your cancer. Then again: everybody has to decide for themselves what quality of life means for them

Options 3 and 4: Radiation treatment for prostate cancer

There are 2 radiation treatments for prostate cancer : internal and external.

1. Internal radiation therapy (brachytherapy) with radiation seeds or radiation pellets
    
   In this one-time treatment for prostate cancer, pellets of radioactive material are implanted directly into the cancerous tissue.

   These radia-active pellets will kill the cancerous cells in the immediate vicinity as well as normal body cells.

   Side-effects include urinary leakage and/or penile dysfunction.

   Brachytherapy is very expensive so your doctor will only recommend this prostate cancer treatment when your cancer hasn’t spread.

    

2. External radiation therapy is the older form of radiation treatment.
   
   Using this kind of prostate treatment, you will have to go several times to hospital and undergo radiation therapy.

   Since the radiation beams penetrate through your skin, muscle and fat before reaching the cancerous tissue of the prostate, more normal body cells will be damaged compared to brachytherapy.

Once you are offered a prostate treatment, always ask for a second opinion.

Let a doctor in one of the specialized prostate cancer treatment centers re-advice you which of the prostate cancer cures will suit you best.

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Mostly end stage prostate cancer symptoms will include weight loss, tiredness and pain. Especially pain will be felt in the lower back and hips.

End stage prostate cancer in most cases moves from the prostate gland to the bones, which makes the cancer very difficult to cure.

Since prostate cancer occurs more likely in older men and can take 15 years or more to fully develop, lots of people with prostate cancer do die because of something else than the cancer itself.

When you reach end stage prostate cancer, it’s wise to contact hospice and palliative care givers.

Focus on what is called "quality of life", which is another way of saying:

make sure you show as much love
from as much people you can surround
the patient having end stage prostate cancer symptoms with.

Read more about What do you say to man who is going to die.

General End-Stage Indicators

• Physical decline
   
• Weight loss
   
• Dependent on others for most daily life activities

In case official methods are needed to determine the symptoms of an end stage and to qualify for hospice:

• Serum albumin <2.5gm/dl : Serum albumin is a protein in the blood that is often monitored in patients to determine how well the patients are nourished. Albumin is essential for maintaining the osmotic pressure needed for proper distribution of body fluids between intravascular compartments and body tissues. When serum albumin is too low, you will notice swollen feet and legs, due to water accumulation.
   
• Karnofsky score (KPS) <50% : Karnofsky score is measured on the Karnofsky scale: A performance scale that rates a person’s normal activities.

Normally the doctor or oncologist will say there is no more cure for the patient, and at that moment you reach "the end stage" or are "transferred" to palliative care. At that stage, doctors will do all they can to make any symptoms as easy to bear as possible. This mostly boils down to:

• pain control through pain medication
   
• stool control through laxatives as pain medication causes constipation
   
• sleeping pills
   
• anti anxiety medication (malnourished and dehydrated people do get hallucinations)

Share your prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in men with more than 200,000 new cases of prostate cancer each year.

Therefore we ask all prostate cancer patients and loved ones to leave a comment, to share your story so that:

• others walking the same path are better informed and
   
• others can share their problems, fears, anger and other experiences.

Leave especially a comment telling us what symptoms made you go to the doctor before you got diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Palliative caregivers and loved ones:

please leave a comment describing the end stage prostate cancer symptoms you experienced.

Technorati Tags: end stage prostate cancer symptoms, hips, Prostate Cancer, prostate cancer symptoms, tiredness, weight loss