Patients share their experiences navigating prostate cancer treatment, discussing the physical and emotional challenges of chemotherapy, hormone therapy, surgery, and recovery. They emphasize the importance of managing side effects, staying active when possible, maintaining a positive outlook, and working closely with their healthcare teams to adapt as treatment progresses.

Joe LaBella:

They said chemotherapy, and I'm going to tell you, the whole world kind of went dark for a little bit and I was like, "Uh, okay. Well this is just another fight, we just figure it out." And it really wasn't that bad. They gave it to me every three weeks, and the first three-week session I was like, "Man, if this is as bad as it gets, I'm cool." Second set took me out.

I felt like a 1959 Edsel, I was leaking oil everywhere. I didn't think I was going to make it through it at one point. Couldn't breathe, I had lung issues, and that ain't me, that's not my place. I've never been there before, I've always been strong as a bull. I just didn't go down for anything, and this beat me up pretty good.

But as we got through it, I'd take the chemo, you'd feel really good the day after or pretty good the day after, and then by the second day it would start to beat you up really bad. And two or three days after that, further away you got from that shot, from the drip, the better you felt, and it started off like to walk a half a block. You'd have to force yourself to walk that half a block and turn around and come back, and at some point you're thinking, "I don't know if I'm going to get back to the house or not."

But as it goes, then it was a block and a half. I consistently make two miles four or five times a week right now. I'm not jogging. Everything that you take, I don't care if it's an aspirin, has a reaction. What goes in must come out. And the pills that I'm on, as I was saying out there, it's this different realm for me.

I break out into the sweats. And they said, "Well, you're going to go through menopause." And I went, "Oh, this is just not fair." Because I remember when she went through that, and now I'm going through the sweats and I'm looking at her going, "How did you do this? I'm in an air-conditioned house, it's 70 degrees in there, and I got a blanket on one minute, and the next minute I'm sitting up and pouring sweat. Where did that come from? And for what?

Well, it's the hormones. You could have kept those. When those hormones kick in and all of a sudden, and we joke about it, I got a propensity to want to shop and I cry at Hallmark movies. You feel different about things. Your body feels different. It's a different feeling altogether, but you got to suck it up and go on about your business.

Bennie Johnson, Jr.:

My count was very high. And I saw Dr. Marty and he decided to put me on a pill called Xtandi. Well, first of all, I got a Lupron shot, and that shot kind of drove me crazy because I've heard of hot flashes, but for me to actually experience the hot flashes, it was just driving me up a wall. I sang in the choir at my church and when I was singing, I would just be sweating.

Everybody said, "What is going on with this man?" So I decided that the Lupron shots were not for me. I would come in the evening and I would sit down and pretty much go right to sleep, and that's not me. I'm very energetic, like to be moving around. But after that, I met Dr. Klausman and we decided to just take a break from that, but to go on Xtandi.

The Xtandi pill that I took had a little chemo in it, and I was taking four a day, and that kind of wore me down a little bit. And after the tumor shrunk, Dr. Klausman kind of backed away from it, and as of right now, today, I'm off of it for now because my PSA came down so low and that was the treatment that I was looking for, and it's been very good since then. Had no problem since that point. It rise a little bit at a time, but that's par for the course there.

Scott Evenson:

We've always been told chemo is just so bad. A buddy of mine would joke and say it's this green stuff that they put into you. But no, yeah, the thought process out there is it's just terrible, but no, don't... I would say with what you had said of the numbers, don't be scared of it, embrace it. I might had a little bit of mouth sores, but I used Biotène rinse, but literally I think that was it if I ever think back. It wasn't bad at all. Did it affect me? Absolutely. I was slow, I was tired for at least a few days afterward, but I never had nausea.

During the chemotherapy treatments, I had heard that there's going to be a chance for neuropathy, fingertips, toes, things like that, so I brought my own little cooler and brought ice bags and literally set my feet on ice bags and held onto ice bags. And then my support network, either my brother or some friends came, and would kind of feed me some ice chips during the chemotherapy treatment. And there's nothing that says that that necessarily works. Even the nurses are like, "Well, we can help you assist, but we can't really give you the ice bags." But thankfully, no neuropathy. Whether it worked or not, jury's out.

Henry Cornelius:

Had my abdominal drain and the people in the neighborhood were complimenting me on my bag and just continued exercising every day. The most frustrating thing was having these tubes coming out of me. And once the urinary catheter came out, which was an absolute delight, which I recommend to everybody to enjoy at one point or another, it didn't hurt when they took it out, which was awesome.

Small victories like that have been amazing. The abdominal drain was frustrating because it didn't feel like I was making any forward progress, and when you're putting out a liter of fluid a day coming out of your belly and then I couldn't make forward progress till eventually finally, day by day, it got to the point where I could take it out.

John Burke:

Immediately the doctor told me of the side effects of each one of these procedures. And he said, "If you do nothing, you could die or maybe you won't. You could do a prostatectomy, but you will live a life of incontinence, maybe. You should have no problem living like an athletic full lifestyle, maybe. Your sexual life will be full, but not always." And there were many other coins with two sides.