For most men (and their families) who have just been given a diagnosis of prostate cancer, the initial fear is quickly compounded by confusion.

The confusion starts with the manner in which medicine attempts to quantify the current state of your disease, and provide you with numbers that could be helpful in thinking about both the immediate and long-term future -- IF you could understand the numbers.

As a first step under basics, we have tried to clear away a bit of the confusion in our By The Numbers section. We start with PSA levels, the first number you probably heard, move to staging, grading and scoring, and finally advance to the "Partin tables" -- an effort to correlate these numbers and turn them into risk estimates.

The second source of confusion you will encounter comes in your choice of treatment. While some doctors will make a strong recommendation as to the best course of action, others encourage patients to read about the various options and participate in the treatment decision.

As a second step under basics, we try to explain some of the pros and cons of different approaches under Treatment Options. These start with watchful waiting, move to the choice between surgery and either external beam radiation or brachytherapy, and include some of the newer treatment approaches using hormones and cyrosurgery.

While whatever treatment you and your doctor choose will hopefully be the end of your brush with prostate cancer, for some patients the battle goes on after the initial therapy -- or resumes months or years later.

If you are one of those for whom the struggle continues, you may well be faced with new sets of options. As a third step under basics, we attempt in Round Two to explain some additional therapies, and look at new drugs that may soon offer new hope for men with advanced stage prostate cancer.

This section is being restructured and expanded and will be completed shortly. If links do not work, those pages are still under construction.