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I have a friend who was diagnosed 9 years ago with PSA greater than 1000 and given only 3 years to live at best . He has been on some sort of Hormone Therapies (that involve going on and off them ). Some were experimental. He had a one year break at one point. He said that at times the effects of the hormone therapy are difficult to endure...but he's still around. I think his current PSA is something like 3.5 or 4. He's a very private person, but I thought that it would be good for readers with aggressive prostate cancer to know that progress is being made. Big progress.
Here are some statistics from the nearly 1400 Survivor Stories in the YANA database.
There are 18 stories with an initial PSA of over 1000 (ranging from 1000 to 7000):
- 4 are still actively updating their story on YANA
- 8 have passed on (some from prostate cancer, others from unrelated causes)
- 6 have not been updated for 15 months or more, so we don't know their status (those stories have been designated as "obsolete")
This is a very small sample size, and each case has its own unique characteristics (age at diagnosis, Gleason score, selected treatment methods, and other factors). Therefore, it is inappropriate to draw any firm conclusions from this data.
Mark Freedkin
YANA Administrator
Irvine, California
I'll ask him the next time I'm speaking with him for more details. The cancer had obviously broken out so an operation was not in the cards. He was in his early 60's when diagnosed. His much younger brother got checked as a precaution at that time and had surgery in the very nick of time. About a year later I was diagnosed with low grade prostate cancer and had it yanked. Testing showed that my cancer was more aggressive than had been thought so I dodged a bullet.
