Option 2 Radiotherapy Brachytherapy

My second meeting was set up with a Radiotherapist at a major cancer hospital.

He explained that they use a specialist branch of radiotherapy called brachytherapy to treat prostate cancer patients.

During this procedure you have small radioactive 'seeds' put into your prostate. This then emits radiation over a period of time and kills the cacer cells.

The advantage of brachytherapy over normal radiotherapy is that the radiation is much more specifically targeted. In external beam radiotherapy, the beam passes right through your body and damages healthy tissue as well as cancer cells. Not so with brachytherapy. You also have no need to keep visitng the hospital for doses. Eventually the seeds radiation expires.

He quoted stats of 30% chance of impotence. A 60% -80% chance of being cancer free after then years.
He thought incontinence was unlikely to be an issue, but warned you could experience irritation for up to three months with a patients experiencing a burning sensation and an urgent need to pee.

On questioning he thought brachytherapy was a better solution to surgery as it had less potential impact on incontinence, although interestingly his stats of being cured of cancer were worse than the surgeon performing the radical prostatectomy.
I also asked him what he thought about HIFU ( ultrasound ) which I was reading a lot about. He repeated the surgeon's sentiments that I needed a gold standard proven technique with stats to back it up.

He did however offer the name of a HIFU specialist if I wanted to speak to him which indeed I did.

I left with a feeling that I was totally confused over which way to go. I wanted a specialist to tell me what I needed to do. How could I be qualified to make such a decision. Both brachytherapy and radical prostatectomy seemed unpleasant and I was terrified I would regret the decision. That being said brachytherapy seemed to be the less invasive and I was leaning that way if I had to choose between the two.

I decided to pursue HIFU as I had read reports in the press that it was new prostate cancer salvation, hoping it might prove to be a way out of this nightmare and after all it gave me some more time to stick my head in the sand and put off the decision.

I also asked the radiotherapist if I really could take three months to make a decision and he agreed that it was not an issue judging from the results of the biopsy.