Living with Metastatic Prostate Cancer

I am Gary Johnson and here is what having metastatic prostate cancer means to me. What I always tell everybody is that I am lucky to have prostate cancer because prostate cancer is a slow growing cancer and it gives you time to do things, gives you time to do things in your life that you have never done before. And there are also so many drugs coming down now a days. I'm on a drug now that was not even available when I was first diagnosed nine years ago and you have to go through a lot of side effects, you know, the drugs and their side effects, but really if you, you know, live your life, you are exercising, you are eating better, doing things, you can actually live a very high quality of life with prostate cancer. It's not something that you are going to die two months from now and so prostate cancer is the wake up call and it is also something that really makes you see your life in a different way and start doing things in a different way that you have before, so I don't want prostate cancer, but I have enjoyed the time from the time when I was diagnosed until now that had been actually one of the better times in my life. Some prostate cancers are high risk, aggressive, and more likely to spread. Others are low risk, least likely to have bad outcomes. The biopsy says cancer, but current diagnostic tools provide limited information about how aggressive a man's individual disease is, so most men decide to treat prostrate cancer immediately. Once treated, many men experience serious long-term side effects like incontinence and *** impotence. Immediate treatment is not always needed, but right now a man can't be sure if his cancer is the kind that is likely to require treatment or if he is okay to wait for now. What if there was a test that could determine how aggressive prostate cancer is. Genomic health is developing a new test to do just that. By reviewing the underlying biology of the tumor and using genes from multiple biologic pathways, the test can predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer when diagnosed, allowing a man to make a more informed treatment decision with confidence, taking care of himself with more information and greater peace of mind.