Interview 48

Age at interview: 68

Age at diagnosis: 66

Brief Outline:

Diagnosed with prostate cancer 1999, brachytherapy 1999, short hormone treatment.

Describes his treatment and advice from the medical professionals involved.

I was given a patient information folder, which included a copy of a learned paper giving a professional review of prostate Brachytherapy. This concluded in part 'Brachytherapy appears to perform at least as well as either surgery or external beam therapy,' for local carcinoma of the prostate. The actual brachytherapy operation involves an overnight stay also, in my case two nights, because I needed an extra night's post operative recovery time. 

On the evening before you go through the purgative procedure again because the rectal ultrasound scanner is in use through the seed implant operation. Apart from this the ordinary general anaesthetic procedure is followed and you are only aware of post operative recovery. In my case with the use of oxygen which I did not find pleasant. Afterwards they get you to drink vast amounts of water in order to encourage a return to normal urine flow. The hospital leaflet had described this procedure and the usual immediate after effects. A letter reporting on my operation told my GP that as the radiation from the seeds is building up in the prostate over the next 2 to 3 weeks he's likely to develop urethritis with dysuria, frequency, urgency, hesitancy and nocturia. Dysuria will usually settle in 10 to 14 days but hesitancy, urgency and nocturia may continue for three to four months. 

And they have a, gradually they become weaker don't they?

Yes, there is a build up as I mentioned but after a year they start to run down and for that reason they are left in position but are harmless. There's no danger to other people although immediately after the operation it's suggested that you don't pick up young children until about a month has gone by.

You may have mentioned this but I can't remember, when you came round from the operation did you have a catheter for a little while?

Yes they do that as a matter of procedure for a few hours and usually the following day this is removed. In some ways the removal of the catheter is the most painful part of the whole thing although of course that's only just momentary.

Concludes the fullest and most useful advice was from Prostate Cancer Charity.

Obviously the news that I had cancer was a shock and the urologist then had me have an MRI and bone scans to confirm that the cancer had not spread outside the prostate gland. Nevertheless with regard to treatment the urologist spoke of only two choices, between prostatectomy which would be quick and radioactive therapy which would be for daily sessions for a period of I believe 12 weeks. He would arrange for a booklet to be sent to me but this hadn't arrived after a week and my wife and I decided to get hold of as much information as quickly as we could. Several relatives and friends who had access to the Internet began sending us helpful printouts from web sites listing treatments, and useful books, which are all available from various charitable help lines. The fullest and most helpful information had been published by the Prostate Cancer Charity who are in Du Cane Road, London and they publish fact sheets for each type of treatment and the various side-effects. Especially helpful was a list of men who had various treatments giving dates and telephone numbers. This meant I was able to telephone another man to talk about his experiences.
 

Describes how Detrusitol helped prevent urinary symptoms interfering with his life after Brachytherapy.

Temporary incontinence due to male cystitis in my case necessitated pads available from the District Nurse for one week & my operation having taken place in September '99 I still had a few urinary symptoms eight months after the operation, that is very urgent frequency together with a very occasional accident and nocturia once or twice at night. I sought further advice from my urologist who prescribed Detrusitol [tolterodine] this gave me the ability to control the frequency which had begun to interfere with travel by train.