A Devastating Prognosis and a Revolutionary Treatm...
Prostate Cancer
A Devastating Prognosis and a Revolutionary Treatment
George Crawford, a native New Yorker, has been through a lot in his 81 years. He lived through World War II, he was in the Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis; he’s done a lot of living and he has a lot of stories to tell. But receiving his prostate cancer diagnosis still came as a big shock.
“When my doctor told me that I had stage four cancer, a very, very aggressive cancer, he didn’t say in so many words I had four months to live … but he gave every signal that he could that this was not a good story at all,” George says. “I told my wife, and I told immediate family, but I asked them not to tell anybody else because I hadn’t even come to terms with it myself.”
Despite his grim prognosis, George happened to get lucky. He was undergoing a summer-long regiment of chemotherapy when his doctor went away to a symposium and was told about a drug called Zytiga — a type of hormonal therapy that blocks the production of androgens, which are the hormones that help prostate cancers to grow. “He came back and he said, there’s a new protocol, you start taking Zytiga as quickly as you can,” George says. “He said I [was] really, basically, the first person in America to do this.”
And the Zytiga worked for George — over time, his prognosis got better and batter. And after all was said and done, George says something good did come out of his cancer journey — it brought his family closer together.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
George Crawford, a native New Yorker, has been through a lot in his 81 years. He lived through World War II, he was in the Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis; he’s done a lot of living and he has a lot of stories to tell. But receiving his prostate cancer diagnosis still came as a big shock.
“When my doctor told me that I had stage four cancer, a very, very aggressive cancer, he didn’t say in so many words I had four months to live … but he gave every signal that he could that this was not a good story at all,” George says. “I told my wife, and I told immediate family, but I asked them not to tell anybody else because I hadn’t even come to terms with it myself.”
Despite his grim prognosis, George happened to get lucky. He was undergoing a summer-long regiment of chemotherapy when his doctor went away to a symposium and was told about a drug called Zytiga — a type of hormonal therapy that blocks the production of androgens, which are the hormones that help prostate cancers to grow. “He came back and he said, there’s a new protocol, you start taking Zytiga as quickly as you can,” George says. “He said I [was] really, basically, the first person in America to do this.”
And the Zytiga worked for George — over time, his prognosis got better and batter. And after all was said and done, George says something good did come out of his cancer journey — it brought his family closer together.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.