DENVER -- 7NEWS anchor Mike Landess has prostate cancer. He is taking an approach called watchful waiting.

About 230,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, but it affects more than just the patient. The outcomes of treatments affect women, making this disease something a family tackles together.

"The first thing, when you hear cancer, it's scary. I mean it really is scary, but then the way that we approached it, is all of a sudden you start information gathering and we just started reading everything we could," said Joyce Hutchens.

Her husband, Wayne Hutchens, said, "You get all kind of different advice as you would imagine, probably an overload and everybody reacts to your own situation."

The future of prostate cancer research and treatment will rely heavily on women.

Doctors have said men need to learn from women. And wives need to get their husbands to the doctor's office for real advancements to be made in detecting and treating prostate cancer.

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure drew a crowd of nearly 66,000 people in Denver alone in 2006. Meanwhile, only 600 men ran in the race aimed at raising money for prostate cancer research.

One doctor, Dr. Michael Glode from CU Cancer Center, described it this way: "If the Susan G. Komen foundation is racing for the cure, then we're crawling for the cure."

The big challenge facing doctors is how to get the word out about prostate cancer. Many believe women are key.

"I think women are the answer. I think women take a bigger interest in health care. I found that you can spend 30 minutes explaining a clinical trial and what it would answer and at the end, he'd look at his watch and say, 'What time does the Bronco game start?'" said Glode.

So why are women more engaged in their health? Edward DiGiacomo has a thought: "Because we're men, and we don't like to go to doctors, at least I don't."

"Men don't like to talk about their illnesses or their defects. They don't like to be defective. Women want to get it find out, get treated so they can get on with their life," said his wife, Sonja DiGiacomo.

But it takes more than women just getting their husbands to the doctor to get screened. Experts say women need to get men involved in clinical trials to test new treatments.

But women need to get their husbands to tell their stories and break the stereotypes surrounding prostate cancer.

"The public's image of prostate cancer is these are 70-year-old grandfathers who've lived a good life and now they have prostate cancer. 'Well, that's too bad,'" Glode said.

Men are now being told to begin prostate cancer screenings in their 40s.

Prostate cancer research is about 15 years behind breast cancer research, but doctors say they're making strides in finding answers in how to treat the disease.

For Dr. David Crawford at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, the answers lie in finding better ways to target the disease.

"We find where the cancer is in the prostate, and we just treat the cancer and it's kind of like the male lumpectomy," he said.

That can happen with new imaging technology being used at the Anschutz Cancer Center, which puts the prostate into a three-dimensional image.

"I think the future is going to be we're gonna see a lot more of this and a lot less of the aggressive therapies," Crawford said.

Those therapies would target the cancer and treat it, eliminating the need for full prostatectomies.

Glode said clinical trials are happening right now to find ways to detect who is at risk for prostate cancer and treat it before it develops with a shot.

"New drugs related to that and in some cases in the form of vaccines or at least two or three clinical trials with vaccines with a couple hundred men in the trials that look a little bit promising," Glode said.

He said clinical trials are finding hormone therapy could be just as effective in treating prostate cancer as it is in treating breast cancer.

"If prostate cancer turns into a disease that you can take a pill for once a day and live for 30 years anyway, that's a pretty good goal," Glode said.

So, prostate cancer patients have just as many options about what to do now as doctors have options for how to treat it in the future.

Want to send an e-mail to Mike? His address is Mike_Landess@TheDenverChannel.com.

Prostate Cancer Resources:

Prostate Cancer Education Council -- www.pcaw.com
For general information on disease and treatment options, try www.prostate-cancer.org
For general information go to www.prostateinfo.com
To learn more about Loma Linda (California) University Medical Center's site on Proton treatment, go to www.llu.edu/proton
A web site by and for people who've had the proton treatment is www.protonbob.com