Albert and Rose Lopez have been in love for a lifetime.
“He's my life. He's everything to me. I mean 52 years, that's a long time,” said Rose.
ABC15 spoke with the couple who say they planned to continue their lives together until they received Albert's prostate cancer diagnosis.
“It scared me really bad,” said Albert.
Three years after the retired Marine was diagnosed, his doctor recommended a prostatectomy, a complete removal of the prostate.
“We went home that evening, we were talking about the procedure that the doctor wanted us to and then we saw you on the news,” said Albert.
In November 2022, ABC15 featured a new prostate cancer procedure called the Tulsa Pro.
“When you interviewed those two men and they said there was no chemo, there was no radiation and there was no bad side effects, I turned to him and said maybe we should look into this,” according to Rose.
The next day they made an appointment with Doctor Mark Hong with Integrative Urology, who specializes in Tulsa Pro.
Albert explained to him he didn’t want to get a Prostatectomy, fearing the side effects that come along with that type of surgery.
“Unfortunately, the major side effects of treating prostate cancer, especially with traditional surgery in complete removal operation, are incontinence, leakage of urine, and erectile dysfunction or the inability to get a penile erection,” according to Dr. Hong.
Albert then agreed to get the Tulsa Pro procedure.
“What's important here is the thermography, a very sensitive temperature map. That's important because when we're killing the cancer, we're superheating the cancer,” said Dr. Hong. “We only treat the drawn-out portion and leaving the other structures around the prostate alone.”
A new three-year study by Profound Medical published in the Journal of Urology studied 115 men with prostate cancer who used the Tulsa Pro. It found was 87% maintained erectile function, 99% kept urinary continence and up to 80% of the men saw an improvement in their cancer.
“We have data,” explained Dr. Hong. “That's been well reported in all the major journals in urology and we can say that the cancer results with Tulsa Pro are excellent.”
Doctor Hong is calling Albert’s case a success, leaving Albert and Rose extremely grateful.
“It's been hard, especially with everything that we had to go through. But I think after this, all of our stress will be relieved,” said Rose.
Now the Lopez family can get back to what matters most, each other, and continue their life together.
