Dads diagnosis

Hello Tari, I’m so sorry to hear of your fathers diagnosis. Take a look at - https://prostatecanceruk.org. There are lots of downloadable booklets which provide good info.  I think Macmillan also give info somewhere on their site. I found the best thing for me was to get as much info as possible so I could understand what was happening. My husband also did his fair share of googling. The more you all understand the better your dad can make informed decisions about his treatment options etc and the better you will be able to support him.

getting this diagnosis is a big shock for everybody. There will be lots of questions as you go along. What we took to doing was to type all our questions down and hand the list to the doctor at each consultation. I accompany my husband to the consultations as a support and also to note the answers to our questions.

Best of luck!

I suspect the treatment will be hormone therapy to manage it. This would be with periodic injections (which in some cases start with a 28 day course of tablets). There are also advanced hormone therapy tablets (not the ones used to start the injections) which can be added, and some oncologists do this from the start, while others add them later if the injections stop being so effective.

You don't say how old your dad is and what his state of health is other than the prostate cancer, which would impact what treatments are available, and might be why chemo isn't available.

You could ask if radiotherapy might be an option, but getting it to those lymph nodes without causing significant bowel issues might not be possible. Sometimes it's considered worth doing the prostate even if there are a small number of mets which can't be done, as it slows the growth in the mets if the bulk of the cancer can be wiped out.