A Wife's Comments- Deborah

Keith and I have already given out HIFU information to people here in Santa Fe and in Colorado because we are very excited about the treatment. We did a lot of research on every kind of treatment there is for Prostate cancer before we decided to do HIFU. In fact we have a book full of printed material that Keith got off the internet on every kind of treatment there is for prostate cancer.

We at first considered Cyberknife and Da Vinci before Keith happened on the HIFU site. If you would believe, our urologist here practically told Keith he would not take out the suprapubic catheter before he went for the procedure. But he did even though he has been more than skeptical about the whole HIFU treatment.

A lot of people seem to be so scared by the word cancer that they just go for any treatment their doctor recommends and don't even look at the side effects. The side effects are the big reason we chose HIFU as they are minimal and we have had a long happy marriage of 44 years and frankly his health is as important to me as it is to him. Most of the men we have talked to have incontinence problems and impotency problems after radiation and radical prostatectomy. We chose HIFU as incontinence and impotency problems when researched seemed minimal.

Keith has not been incontinent since his HIFU treatment in late January, but has had increased urgency in urination and frequency of urination at night. Before HIFU he had to get up once in the middle of the night and did not have urgency in urination. He now has to get up a couple times in the middle of the night and he says his urination stream is somewhat weaker. He says these inconveniences are slowly getting better. As far as impotency, Keith was not impotent before HIFU nor is he after. We would both agree that two thirds of a 50 mg tablet of Viagra worked well before HIFU to maintain, but since HIFU it's difficult to achieve with Viagra and difficult to maintain.

Deborah Santa Fe, NM