Without getting into any details about side-effects, from what I understand, a lot of prostate cancer patients experience them, and many exit treatment feeling unprepared for the physical and psychological burden associated with them.
What’s worse, some “don’t want to talk about them” even to the extent of living with side-effects for years without being aware that there are sometimes recovery options available.
Is this really any wonder? Someone is told they have cancer… big cloud of white noise, and the words “potential for cure” are thrown in there – of course cure sounds more important than side-effects… then the guy goes home with his surgical or radiotherapy appointment(s) on the calendar – he still has a few weeks to “think about it and do some research” so he goes online and starts looking for unproven treatments that claim to be “side-effect free…”
Now let’s be sure to note that side-effects from the past decade’s shiny new wonder treatments (HIFU, Chryotherapy, proton therapy and the like) are showing up more and more…
So… he then either decides to go with proven approaches that have years of solid data to support their use, along with the data re side-effects and treatment failures… or to undergo some new/experimental approach (hopefully within the context of a clinical trial so he can contribute to future improvements and moving promising approaches to care into the arena of general care)… and irrespective of choice, sooner or later he will usually experience some sort of side-effect…
He might not complain because in his mind the doctor saved his life, and bringing up side-effects just seems petty…
Well – here is my first idea for how we might take a lesson from the breast cancer patient advocates on this issue…
Some of you may have hear