Prostate Cancer: Treatment Choices and Daily Notes
Understand prostate cancer monitoring and treatment, and keep useful notes about urinary changes, meals and side effects alongside specialist care.
A diagnosis may bring a treatment plan, or a plan to watch carefully before treating. Either way, it helps to know what the next step is and who can answer a new concern.
Start your food and symptom diary
Understanding Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer affects the prostate gland and may cause no symptoms early on. Urinary changes can occur, but often have non-cancerous causes too. Tests and specialist assessment establish the diagnosis and help guide choices. [1]
Care and everyday food decisions
Some cancers are monitored with a planned programme of reviews and tests. Others need treatment such as surgery, radiotherapy, hormone treatment or medicines. Ask what monitoring means for you and report concerns between appointments rather than treating it as 'doing nothing'. [2]
Keeping a useful personal record
Keep review dates, medicines and urinary or bowel changes with notes about how treatment affects eating and daily life. One Food Forward can help you prepare questions, but cannot interpret a PSA result or decide that treatment should start, stop or change.
Related reading: Chemotherapy / Cancer Treatment.
Does having no symptoms mean follow-up is unnecessary?
No. Prostate cancer can be symptomless. Attend the tests and reviews agreed with your team, including when active monitoring is the chosen approach. [1] [2]
Keep the details somewhere you can find them
There is no need to tell the whole story at once. Start with today’s meal, a symptom or a few words about how you felt. Those small entries give you something to return to when it is time to talk about your care.
Sources and further reading
Your healthcare team should guide diagnosis, treatment and changes to your diet or medicines.
Spotted something that needs correcting? Contact One Food Forward support and include this page’s address.