“I just felt like the technology and the skill level of HALO Dx was light years ahead of what was here available to me locally and that’s why I made the choice to go down there. It just seems like a rational, logical alternative that you don’t have to be a doctor to be able to appreciate.”
“It’s funny; you’re concerned for your husband, but you’re also concerned for your own future and what life might look like without them in it,” said Joy Lowell.
Her husband, Tom Lowell, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016.
“He’s the kind of guy that really looks into and researches things,” said Joy. “He made a concerted effort to find out what he could do to overcome his prostate cancer.”
At the time, Tom was 64-years-old. He was leading an active lifestyle with Joy and running a thriving music business. Illness was the last thing on his mind. He says he only got screened as a way to support a friend. With no symptoms and no family history of prostate cancer, Tom says he never expected that he would be the one receiving bad news.
Tom’s longtime urologist told him that a radical prostatectomy, or surgical removal of the prostate gland, was the best treatment option for his localized prostate cancer. Through research, he discovered that a radical prostatectomy has a 25 percent risk of causing urinary incontinence and a 50 percent risk for permanent erectile dysfunction.
“I knew that having your prostate removed was a gigantic step away from what I consider to be a good quality of life. So, I just started looking for alternatives.”
His search for a minimally invasive, far less daunting procedure led him to MRI-guided laser focal therapy, also known as focal laser ablation, or FLA.
“I’m a math and science guy. This procedure just made sense to me.”
After a consultation with the HALO Diagnostics team, Tom opted to bypass a potentially painful standard transrectal ultrasound biopsy, or TRUS biopsy. After an MRI-guided prostate screening and biopsy, he scheduled a laser ablation procedure in Indian Wells, CA. There, the HALO Dx team that first developed the system to perform LFT to treat prostate cancer including Bernadette Greenwood and Dr. John Feller treated Tom’s case.
“I felt that it made a lot of sense,” says Tom. “Using heat to focally ablate the cancer while employing control measures to prevent damage to surrounding tissue. It just seems like a rational, logical alternative that you don’t really have to be a doctor to be able to appreciate. Given the alternative of just removing the entire organ–to lose that–that’s pretty catastrophic.”
Tom says the outpatient procedure hardly slowed him down. A lifelong musician and lover of rock and roll, Tom says he was back in action, just in time for the 2016 music festival, Desert Trip.
“In terms of the procedures impact on me, it was very manageable. I mean every step of the way. I went to The Rolling Stones concert, which coincidentally happened to be the evening right after the surgery, so the impact upon me was not that dramatic.”
Tom’s prostate cancer remains in remission today, and he reports that his quality of life has never been better.
“I paid for it out of my own pocket and I believe it was well worth the expense.”
You can read more about Tom’s experience with HALO Dx’s laser focal therapy procedure as featured in this month’s USA Today special Men’s Health edition here.
Did you know that HALO Dx’s laser focal therapy procedure may also be used in the precise, minimally invasive treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH)? Get the full breakdown on the HALO Dx MRI-guided therapy and genomic testing ensemble here. Click to schedule your free prostate cancer or BPH treatment consultation below or call 760-469-8057.
