ORLANDO, Fla. — Former President Joe Biden took to social media on Monday for the first time since the announcement of his cancer diagnosis, thanking all his supporters.
“Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” the 82-year-old former president wrote in part.
On Sunday it was revealed that Biden has stage 4 prostate cancer, so WFTV got insight on this disease from Dr. Robert W. Santa-Cruz, a urologist at AdventHealth.
The cancer has spread to Biden’s bones, and Santa-Cruz explained that the location of the cancerous deposits plays a major role in the type of symptoms Biden might experience.
“It really depends where in the bone or where in the that their deposit is,” Santa-Cruz said. “Typically it will be in the lumbar spine. If that’s the case, it certainly can impact how he walks. It can impact his sensation in his legs. It could make it difficult for him to have balance because of discomfort.”
When asked what the next few years look like for the former president, Santa-Cruz answered “When we talk about metastatic disease, we’re in the category of cancers that are not curable at this point. But we have a wonderful set of tools that we can use to reduce the progression of the disease.”
He noted that hormone therapy is a common approach to managing prostate cancer that has spread to the bones.
“Generally speaking, hormonal therapy can suppress prostate cancer without development of new disease on average for two years,” he said.
However, the treatment is not without its drawbacks. Santa-Cruz also mentioned that side effects from medications used to stop the growth of cancer can pose their own challenges, like hot flashes, mood swings, depression and weight gain.
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