Customer Reviews

How We Survived Prostate Cancer: What We Did and What We Should Have Done

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There are points made in this book that will not only save lives but the enormous discomfort that can come from choosing the wrong therapy from the wrong source. Buy it, it is so worth the price. It makes such great points that I cannot imagine anyone not profiting from this book.

Point one: shop around. there is always time. Point two: take someone with you (this in its own way is more difficult than point one, as many men are extremely shy and falsely rugged when it comes to having someone present discussing penis stuff, potency, incontinence and the like). Point three: do your research: there is an enormous amount of up to date info on the web and don't rely on the main sources, or the doctor treating you - - find reports from those who have experienced first hand the different therapies - - like Hallerman's husband in her book. Point four: treating prostate cancer is a business, and you will be hustled to choose the doctor who is pitching a particular therapy, so buyer beware.

I speak from some experience, having just had prostate cancer treatment and done up to date research. My urologist was a generalist, yet advised me to have him operate even though that was not his specialty. Like Hallerman's husband, I had heard of radiation seed treatment, and that seemed better than being cut open, so I asked for a referral to a radiation seeds doctor, and went for a consultation. there I learned that my prostate was enlarged and would have to be shrunk a bit before the seeds treatment. i dreaded hormone therapy for all the reasons that Hallerman makes clear in her book, as does her husband whose voice is so welcome, so I kept looking.

Before going on there is another major point made by Hallerman - - the effects of radiation are not immediate. With surgery, you get better, hopefully in terms of potency and continence - - with radiation you get worse before you may get better. Also, after surgery you can do radiation if the cancer has spread, but not vice versa.

I investigated surgery with one of the top guns in NYC, and that was like being sold a car. He had brochures of happy patients, and brochures of letters from even happier patients. guys who had just run a marathon a week after surgery, guys who went fly fishing the day after. And the pitch was that urinary frequency would never be a problem again nor would the return of prostate cancer so long as the cancer had not spread.
And NO hormone therapy would be necessary. What I did like about this doctor was his professionalism and his focus on dealing with potency right after surgery by using Viagra etc. Smart both from a marketing point of view, and from an if you don't use it you will lose common sense.

But the idea of surgery was appalling - - I had read Michael Korda's book years before and it frightened me to death, and I thought surgery was a clumsy way to kill a tumor, given the delicate placement of the prostate where cutting it out affects continence and potency sometimes extremely.

So I investigated cryo surgery and that looked best of all though there can be side effects, like the time it takes to regain potency, though the ones mentioned by Hallerman are largely from the past as there have been marked improvements in cryo and much depends on who is doing it. What distinguished the doctor I saw was that he takes a lot of samples in biopsy, up to 70 instead of the usual ten to twelve, so that the tumor(s) can be precisely located and mapped. It would turn out that I had one small tumor, and its Gleason was less than originally determined from the biopsy done by my urologist (advice from old survivors of prostate cancer is to get a second opinion on the biopsy since Gleason score is extremely influential in determining what to do, what kind of treatment and how quickly - - this is very important advice and I never would have followed it but for the fact that the cryo doctor required a new extensive biopsy).

For example, my Gleason had been high enough from the first biopsy that the cryo doctor wanted to put me on Casodex and Lupron to not only shrink the prostate (which Avodard alone can do without the side effects) but to stop the cancer spread during the time it would take to shrink the prostate. When the biopsy he took came back with a lower Gleason, I did not have to do the hormone therapy and the Avodart shrank the prostate enough to make cryo safe. As Hallerman's book makes clear, both by her and her husband, hormone therapy is severe stuff and to be avoided if possible.

I ended up choosing an experimental procedure called irreversible electroporation (IRE) (not mentined in Hallerman's book) a method of isolating the tumor area and nuking it with a very short burst of electricity, and done right the side effects are very short lived - - potency can be totally unaffected immediately though you can't pee for days and have to use a catheter or learn how to self catherize - - which my doctor urged me to learn and it was much easier than I expected and led to a great freedom from having to wearing the irritating catheter and the urine bag. A major medical device company is doing trials with IRE, AngioDynamics, but unfortunately the FDA has suspended the trial not because of bad results, but because the FDA did not specifically approve the IRE device to treat prostate cancer. So you have to go offshore for the treatment.

What helped me a lot was a consultation with another urologist who told me that although what i was going to do in this experimental trial reminded him of the tv show Fringe, it was a harmless experiment because if it did not work i could always do another therapy.

If I have digressed, it is because so much of what worked for me was due to the kind of advice Hallormen gives - -buy the book or get it from your library, but get it.

This book was written and released three years after I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. As I read it I found myself wishing over and over that it had been in print when I first was diagnosed, and that my wife and I had read it together. It isn't a happy book; their struggle was very difficult. But the book raises all the right issues for a couple to be aware of and talking about in order to get through this ordeal stronger as a couple, instead of being shattered by it.

This book was an excellent guide for us. I ordered it the day we found out my husband had prostate cancer, and it helped us tremendously in making the decision on how to treat him. Ms. Hallerman covers all the treatment modalities, discusses the positive and negative aspects, and opening discusses the emotional effects of both having the disease and being a caretaker/helpmate of the patient. My husband is anticipating his surgery with substantially less fear than he had prior to our reading the book, and I am feeling very confident that our decision was the right one. I highly recommend this book!

very good book, clearly written. pretty depressing if you read it after you have selected treatment and it failed, so make sure you read it before you select your treatment.

HOW WE SURVIVED PROSTATE CANCER is a guide, a psychologist and a medical primer to everything you need to know. This beautifully written book holds your hand, points out the icy patches and guides you through the confusing maze of differing opinions, treatment choices and approaches to dealing with the diagnosis.

Victoria Hallerman examines the emotional and physical fallout of each of the choices she and Dean made during this stressful time. She also carefully describes how they each dealt with having made some, ultimately, unfortunate choices and how this affected their relationship.

If you're in this situation, How WE SURVIVED PROSTATE CANCER is the best possible choice you can make. It may, for you, be the neon-colored cone that prevents you from sinking into an enormous pothole on a very rough road.

My first reaction to this excellent book was one of admiration that Hallerman could construct at once a moving personal account of a marriage under siege of health crisis, a constructive guide to intelligently navigating a daunting sea of doctors, treatments and medical decisions and an invaluable resource for treatment information, support groups and internet research. This was as an objective reader and acquaintance of Ms. Hallerman.
But when I received my own diagnosis of prostate cancer shortly after this first reading, I hurried back to the book with a new appreciation of her step by step approach to making my own decisions; the wealth of information gathered in one book; the brilliant inclusion of her husband's thoughts and experiences and her steadfast insistence on getting multiple opinions and not settling for a doctor I wasn't comfortable with.
I credit her book with my own decision to switch to my `second opinion' doctor when I was under whelmed by my diagnosing surgeon and his recommendation for a radiation oncologist. I sent a copy to my GP and he said that reading Hallerman's account of her husband's hormone deprivation therapy `changed his mind' about his absolute endorsement of its use.
This book is recommended for anyone making tough medical decisions as a couple and required reading for prostate cancer sufferers and their partners.

This memoir is well thought out and very well written; it provides today's couples with most if not all of what they need to unite and act as each others best friend and ally in the struggle to combat one of today's worst cancer killers for men. Victoria Hallerman uses her considerable talent as a writer to articulate the horrors and nightmares of the battle she and her husband have waged against prostate cancer. A must read for anyone beginning the battle or even well into it.

While thus book seemed somewhat disorganized in sequence it contains a great deal of useful information and is helpful in the respect of tempering the fear one faces when you first hear the "C" word. It is enlightening to hear from the wife's perspective but I think the references for information about support groups and medical references are the most important. A good book to have in your library if you are having prostate problems.

One couple's story of prostate cancer is told from the wife's viewpoint and spans a six-year journey from diagnosis to treatment. The couple made some mistakes in judgement along the way - and here import not only their survival, but how ill-informed choices can affect their lives. Chapters recount the entire process from diagnosis to assessing options to unexpected side effects of chosen treatments and make for a 'must' for any health library or general lending library strong in cancer survival guides.

Hallerman's book is a captivating and touching story of two people in a fight against prostate cancer, and the struggles they face individually and together. While the book is incredibly helpful to those who are in the face of prostate cancer, it will also grasp the attention readers who are not prostate cancer patient related. It is medically informative, yet a story about love's endurance too. Hallerman retells the details of her husband's pain and suffering as well as her own, while making notes about what she wishes they knew at the time and things that they should have done. It is the genuine honesty of each page that causes it to be such a wonderful piece of literature. I would advise all prostate cancer patients and family members to read this book before beginning the process of treatment so that they can be even just a little bit more informed of what they should be doing, what they should know, and what to expect.