Astonishingly enough prostate cancer radiation treatment (also referred to as Radiotherapy) may not be the best treatment for you if you have prostate cancer. In fact, depending on your age and health it may be years before radiation treatment becomes necessary. Radiation therapy is only one of the therapies you and your doctor will have to decide on. These tips will give you an idea of which type of therapy or combination of therapy you should ask your doctor about.

First a note of caution:

This article is not intended as medical advice, nor should it be taken as medical advice. It is for informational purposes only. As always with a physical illness you should consult your personal physician right away. Please read on.

One of the first things you need to know is a prostate malignancy is perhaps one of the slowest growing tumors of all the other cancers. Because it is so slow growing years may pass with out any noticeable growth of the tumor. When this happens your doctor will generally tell you that you are in Stage One of the disease.

This means your attending physician may well take a "wait and see" attitude. Before, he or she, decide what course of action is to be taken. You may even think the doctor is being somewhat cavalier about the whole thing. Rest assured though your doctor is not being cavalier. He or she is doing what most practicing physicians will do when you are first diagnosed with prostrate cancer and making the decision if prostate cancer radiation treatment is needed. 

During this "wait and see" period your doctor will monitor you closely. There are several tests your physician will use to do this. Actually there is no one test which can determine on its own if you have prostate cancer. Perhaps the most common one is a test known as the Digital Rectal Examination.

More than likely this is the test your doctor may have used to decide you may have a problem with your prostate. This test is quite simple, but uncomfortable, requires the doctor to insert a gloved finger up the rectum. Doing so enables, he or she, to feel the prostate and tumors, thus enabling them to tell if there has been a change in the size of the tumor or additional tumors have formed. There are other tests such as the PSA blood test.

The PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) is a protein which is produced by (you guest it) the prostate gland. Small amounts of the protein pass into the body through the blood.
A normal PSA count, in the blood, is between zero and four.

However, depending on your age it could be higher. Once it reaches a level of 10 or more it can indicate the possibility of prostate cancer. But the truth is other physical conditions could also have the level that high, that is why a PSA test is not the only test used to detect the malignancy. Additional blood test and other test or used to finalize the diagnoses and form a plan of attack on the disease.

One form of attack may be the use of prostate cancer radiation treatment. The Radiotherapy is when your doctor will use a high intensity x-ray to beam radiation directly onto the prostate. This is done in small doses of a few minutes duration at a time. In most cases you will be able to return home the same day. Normally this therapy will be recommended if the disease is localized instead of surgery.

As you have read, there are many tests and other factors, which your doctor must consider, before deciding if prostate cancer radiation treatment should be your plan of attack.

Serious answer: its for a love one who was diagnoise with it.

here are a couple of links that may have info for you:

http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/idc.jsp

http://cms.komen.org/komen/AboutBreastCancer/BreastFacts/WhatIsBreastCancer?ssSourceNodeId=284&ssSourceSiteId=Komen

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=545046

take care.

When a derm sees a suspected skin cancers, a small biopsy is sent to a lab. If it comes back as squamous cell carcinoma, the patient is usually referred to a derm surgeon. The best method is using the Mohs surgical technique, where a scoop is taken out, stained, the searched for cancerous cells. If the margins are not clear, another thin scoop is again removed, and again searched. If necessary, a third and fourth scoop is removed. Now I hasten to add, that the "scoops" are extremely thin. When all margins come back clear, the area is either skin graphed, or put back together in the style of plastic surgery. Google skin cancers + Mohs might find you something.. I had this done a few month ago to two squamous cell carcinomas… and it was three scoops to find clear margins. The record in that office was 13 scoops….. yikes.

Once you are a candidate for skin cancers, you go back to see your derm every 6 months for rechecks.

There are three types of skin cancers… Basal cell, squamous cell, and melanoma. Only the last one spreads. The other two just grow, bleed and erode into nearby tissues.

My Dad was just diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma in August. It is rising to the top as one of the most fast frowing cancers around. I know the doctors told my dad he had a very low chance about 40%. so far we are good but the doctor also said if the cancer comes back. We wont be winning anymore.
god bless you or whoever in your family may have it.
or if you were just wondering..i hope i helped

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Have you ever noticed how many people you hear about that are inflicted with cancer? It seems that every week we hear of someone that has been diagnosed with some form of cancer. It seems that the occurrences are becoming more frequent rather than less frequent even though there have been many years of cancer research, studies and treatments. The prevention of cancer does not seem to have made many advancements. We have a better understanding of the causes of some cancers such as lung cancer as well as skin cancer but many other forms of the disease seem to not have an explanation of why they begin.

I have been very fortunate in my family. We have not had issues with the different forms of cancer to any large extent. My brother-in-law had a patch of cancerous cells removed from his skin. This was a minor surgery and the cancer was stopped. Recently my cousin who is like another sister to me was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her mother’s family has a history of this disease. The ironic thing is that my cousin has been involved in breast cancer research for twelve years. She has a degree in pharmaceutical research. She did a fellowship working on different ways of manufacturing synthetic insulin. Once she was done with her fellowship she was hired by a drug company to help with breast cancer research. This company manufactures on of the drugs that is used in the chemotherapy process for victims of breast cancer. Because the company is involved in administering the drug it has many patients available to track regarding the breast cancer research.

My cousin is trying to find similarities between the people that are diagnosed with breast cancer. She is also working on the profiles of the people that seem to respond well to the treatments and for those that do not. The hope is that if a common denominator is found regarding who responds well and why this can be shared with those that are not doing as well. As my cousin has been involved with the breast cancer research she has noticed how much the attitude of the person plays into their treatment and recovery. Those that have a positive attitude are much more likely to tolerate the medications and have a smoother adjustment. Those patients that are negative about their treatments or pessimistic about their survival rate often do not respond to the medications. My cousin told me that those that hear cancer and feel that this is a death sentence usually do die from their disease. When it comes to cancer the mind certainly plays a huge role.