24th July 2016
At the time of writing, it is less than 24 hours until my three monthly follow up appointment with my ONCO at Guys. I'm bricking it, no, I'm really bricking it as the years pass and the treatments ultimately fail, I wonder if tomorrow will bring the news that the Enzalutamide I have been taking for the past five months has also started to fail too. Nearly out of options, I can almost feel the lips of death kiss my cheeks as the hours tick down to the appointment. Will my PSA be lower than last time, has it stabilised or will it have risen like a Spanish stallion to the the skies, 30,40, 50, even a 100!? Will the face that greets me behind the stark cold corridors of the cancer department at Guys be welcoming and positive or have an accent of gravity about it? Time will tell, time will out as my grandmother used to say.
Still asymptomatic save for the gynocomastia and sweats, heaven knows what has been going on in my body these past three months since my clear bone scan. The catastrophist in me wagers a massive rise in PSA heralding the last chance saloon option of chemotherapy, one that we all know does little to stop the car crash about to happen nor one that does little to improve one's quality of life - or the glass half full viewpoint of a stable or even lower PSA meaning that I should just keep taking the four bullet sized drugs each morning with my Special K.
These past three days, I've been like a cat on a hot tin roof unable to think of anything other than my appointment and the result of my latest PSA test. It's more than anxiety, it's a kalaedoscope of fear coursing through my veins that makes me not very good company at the moment. I can't wait for tomorrow to come.
25th July 2016
The sun was shining brightly on a glorious summer's morning as I entered Guy's oncology department today. Weight check made, I waited until my name was flashed on the screen and entered into see the ONCO. He wasn't wearing the mask of the Grim Reaper but he also was smiling too much either. As I feared, my PSA had risen in three months from 1.66 to 7.6, hardly stallion-like to the skies but ominously so as I thought that Enzalutamide may have worked for a bit longer before seeing a rise. My issue, he told me was my young age, virility and the fact that it's really difficult to bring down my testosterone reading sufficiently. He believes it's a case of the small amount of cancer in my body feeding off of that small amount of remaining testosterone rather than it spreading virulently and making its own food. Let's not forget that my PSA is still lower than six and a half years ago when I was first diagnosed when it was 10.3.
Fortunately, he never used the word "blip" but did say that increasing the frequency of my dosage of Prostap and/or changing it to Zoladex (in conjunction with the Enza) could see the drop in Testosterone we are both seeking. He then smiled and started talking cricket which immediately put me at ease.
At the end of the day, it was hard to draw any positives from the appointment I had rightly feared but whilst I feel in such rude good health, I just have take the only positive I can from it - that I look and feel absolutely fine - and that whatever is going on in my body is still at the microscopic stage and therefore I do not have to think about planning my funeral quite yet. We left the hospital less numb than we went it, still planning yet another holiday in September, albeit one that will not have to be planned now around some further scans and blood tests but then we've been doing that for years. Cancer, don't you just love it, NOT!
Edited by member 25 Jul 2016 at 21:23
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