Learning About Prostate Cancer
- Legendary music icon and prostate cancer survivor Elton John may be retired from touring, but that’s not stopping him from performing at the Dreamfest concert in San Francisco, California, to help benefit UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals.
- The singer was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017 and treated it with surgery.
- For men with earlier stage stage prostate cancer, there are a number of options and respected urologists can sometimes offer very different opinions for treatment.
- Patients on active surveillance, which is a watch and wait method due to the slow-growing nature of prostate cancer, can be spared the side effects of pursuing the traditional ways of treating prostate cancer.
- If and when the disease becomes more aggressive, it can then be treated with surgery, radiation, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of these therapies.
The exciting news about the annual Dreamforce event was announced on Instagram this week by Salesforce, a top customer relationship management (CRM) software provider.
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An announcement on Dreamforce’s website also states, “The Rocket Man and legendary EGOT winner is set to take the stage for our epic concert.
“Don’t miss this exclusive, once-in-a-lifetime performance. It’s all at Dreamforce and it’s all for a good cause. Be there and help us reach our all-time giving of $120 million in donations for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals.”
The event is set to take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on September 17, 18, and 19 of this year. And for those interested in viewing the upcoming event, but are unable to attend, it will exclusively broadcast for free on Salesforce+.
We’re delighted to see Elton John, who retired from touring last year, making time to help UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals raise money with his performance.
Elton John ability to inspire and impress his fans is heartwarming, and just a few months back, he admitted he was happy to see his “I’m Still Standing” song hit one billion streams on the Spotify app.
“This track has had such a life and whether you know it for its empowering lyrics, the legendary dance moves from the music video, or @taron.egerton’s rendition as Johnny HD in ‘Sing,’ it makes me so happy to see it being enjoyed by so many.”
One of his fans even commented, “This was my theme song during chemo!!!”
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Elton John’s Prostate Cancer Journey
Elton John was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017 and had surgery to treat his disease, something which he impressively didn’t let slow him down.
Following surgery, he revealed that he even wore a diaper onstage during one of his concerts in Las Vegas following his surgery—since he hadn’t yet regained control of his bladder.
In “Elton John: Uncensored,” an earlier interview with the singer on BBC One, Elton John recounted to Graham Norton that he wore a diaper under his outfit during a Las Vegas show in 2017.
“If only they knew at that moment I was pissing myself,” he said.
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Elton John also wrote about his cancer diagnosis in his book “Me,” saying, “I wasn’t as shocked at hearing the word ‘cancer’ as I might have been. It was prostate cancer: no joke, but incredibly common.
“They’d caught it early, and besides, I’m blessed with a constitution that just makes me bounce back from illnesses.”
Thankfully, the surgery he underwent to remove the cancer was a success. However, 10 days later, the singer contracted a fever and a major infection.
“It turned out that I had a rare complication from the operation,” he wrote in the book, and he spent 11 days in a London hospital “wondering if I was going to die.”
The complication ultimately inspired him him to take some time off of touring to spend time with his husband David Furnish, and their sons, Zachary and Elijah.
On his decision to have the surgery, John wrote, “A lot of men won’t have it, because it’s a major operation, you can’t have sex for at least a year afterwards and you can’t control your bladder for a while.
“But effectively my kids made the decision for me. I didn’t like the idea of cancer hanging over me us for years to come: I just wanted rid of it.”
Understanding Prostate Cancer
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, it’s important to remember that most types of prostate cancers are treatable. According to the National Cancer Institute, the five-year survival rate of prostate cancer in the U.S. is 97.1%. There is, however, a small number of men whose type of prostate cancer may become unresponsive to treatment, for example, when cancer cells develop a resistance hormone therapy, the treatment may no longer work.
RELATED: Prostate Cancer: Overview
Prostate cancer begins in the prostate the walnut-shaped gland located between the rectum and bladder that produces the fluid that nourishes sperm. Outside of skin cancers, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men with about one in eight men being diagnosed with this disease during his lifetime.
Helping Patients Understand Prostate Cancer Treatment Options
- If You Have a Family History of Prostate Cancer, Get Screened Early
- When Is High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Used in Prostate Cancer Treatment?
- The Gleason Score Predicts Prognosis and Treatment for Prostate Cancer
- How the Gleason Score Developed and Evolved
- New Drug for Advanced Prostate Cancer Gets Fast-Tracked by FDA; What You Need to Know About This Treatment
- Don’t Believe the Hype: Do Your Own Research on Prostate Cancer Treatment
- Metastatic Prostate Cancer Treatment is Improving
- Partial Gland Ablation: A New Organ-Sparing Treatment Option For Localized Prostate Cancer
It’s important to remember a prostate cancer diagnosis is not always preceded by symptoms. And even when symptoms do occur, they can be inconsistent and hard to pinpoint.
“Prostate cancer is a very odd disease in that it doesn’t have a particular symptom,” Dr. Edwin Posadas, director of translational oncology and the medical director of the Urologic Oncology Program at Cedars-Sinai, told SurvivorNet.
Still, it’s important to note changes in urinary function, like urinating more or less often or waking up at night to go more than usual, could be a sign of prostate cancer. So, even if you think there’s nothing to worry about, always talk to your doctor about changes to your health when they occur.
There are many different treatment options for both early and later-stage prostate cancer including active surveillance, watchful waiting, surgery, radiation, cryotherapy, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy and targeted therapy. The disease is one where doctors may have differing opinions on the best treatment path to take, so don’t hesitate to ask lots of questions and seek out multiple opinions.
Second (& Third) Opinions Matter When Deciding Between Surgery or Radiation
“I think it behooves the patient to have multiple discussions or second opinions, not only by the urologist who did the biopsy and diagnosed that man, but also with other surgeons and other radiation oncologist just to get a very circumspect view of what the treatment options are,” Dr. Jim Hu, a urologic oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, told SurvivorNet. “Oftentimes, I think patients need to understand that our health system is based a lot on fee-for-service medicine.”
“And so therefore, a lot of physicians, I think, who are very well intentioned, will believe that their treatment is best for that particular man,” Dr. Hu added.
Treatment Decisions After a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis
Although there are numerous treatments available for prostate cancer, what your doctor recommends will depend on what category of risk your disease falls under. Sometimes that may mean doing nothing at all.
Prostate cancer is a slow-growing disease, so unless it’s been a majorly delayed diagnosis and in a more advanced stage, medical experts will sometimes suggest actively monitoring the growth, and the patient will go in for check-ups every six months or whatever timeframe the doctor deems best.
Dr. David Wise, NYU Langone medical oncologist, explains how Gleason score affects treatment and prognosis
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines divides prostate cancer into one of six risk categories based on how aggressive the cancer looks under the microscope and the chance of it coming back after treatment. These risk categories help guide treatment for the different subtypes of prostate cancers.
The main risk categories for prostate cancer are:
- Very-Low-Risk (VLR) and Low-Risk (LR)
- Favorable- (FIR) and Unfavorable-Intermediate-Risk (UFIR)
- High-Risk (HR) and Very-High-Risk (VHR)
Prostate cancers classified as VLR or LR represent the least aggressive forms of cancer. This categorization will be diagnosed depending on number of factors, including:
- Your doctor can’t feel the cancer on a physical exam, or it occupies one-half or less of one side of the prostate
- Your PSA is less than 10
- Your total Gleason (which is how the prostate cancer is graded) score is 6
- If your cancer is categorized as VLR or LR, your doctor may recommend active surveillance, which is sometimes called “watch and wait.”
Dr. Nicholas Nickols, a radiation oncologist at the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology, summarizes active surveillance as follows, ‘We carefully monitor the prostate cancer for evidence of progression or not, and then initiate treatment later, if at all.”
During active surveillance, you won’t receive any treatment but your doctor will key an eye on your cancer with a series of tests including:
- PSA Levels
- MRIs
- Repeat biopsies
It’s possible that your cancer may never progress to more aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Active surveillance should help your doctor catch any changes or progression.
RELATED: What is Active Surveillance?
Patients on active surveillance can be spared the side effects of pursuing the traditional ways of treating prostate cancer. If and when the disease becomes more aggressive, as indicated by a rising PSA, development of aggressive-looking disease on MRI, or increasing Gleason score, it can then be treated with surgery, radiation, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of these therapies.
Dr. Edwin Posadas tells you what clues might signal that you have prostate cancer
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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