And so it comes to pass another year has unfolded before us. One thing I have noticed as a relative "veteran" of this forum is the sheer increase in younger men joining this year. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing. Obviously awareness is increasing in Prostate Cancer and three cheers to that. It is the advanced cases in young men I worry about. Something must have seriously affected our genes growing up in the 1960s and 70s.
For myself, it is has been a year of highs (Speaking PSA here) and lows (also speaking PSA) as the Enzalutamide and Prostap cocktail has been jiggled around to finally take control and bring it down. As I speak, it hovers just around 2ngml which, compared to earlier in the year when it shot up (again, relatively speaking to 7 and was rising), I'll take.
2017 will mark seven years since my diagnosis which, given the treatment path I have been through: surgery, radio and HT is not bad. The kitchen sink has cracks in it but it appears to be doing its job and holding its own having been thrown at the cancer numerous times in numerous ways over the past few years.
This year, we have lost many men, as we sadly seem to do. Exbus does a brilliant job in letting us know so that we can pay our respects and offer our condolences. Upstairs, there is a growing crowd of men now free of pain and disease that although I know I will meet them some day, would rather honour from down here for as long as possible.
When I knew my cancer had become incurable, I upped my travel to a level that would have embarrassed Alan Wicker - short trips, not far, but plenty of them. I am a Brexiteer by heart but duplicitously love visiting continental Europe. I've had good wishes from various celebrities including Michael Portillo whose railway journeys across Europe and the UK sustained me when I was bedridden and in pain - and gone through two tablets (the computer type) watching great travel programmes to inspire me. This year, I have visited Budapest twice, Dalyan in Turkey, Seville and have just recently returned from Poznan in eastern Poland where the Christmas markets always seem much better than the British ones.
I have fallen in love (sorry Mrs C) with another. She is known as Wyborowa plum vodka and is the most delicious spirit to drink fresh from the freezer. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to drink on the cocktail of drugs I'm currently on but I do, because it's my life for now and I will. I commend Wyborowa plum vodka to the house - it is simply devine.
Writing work has been thin on the ground this year, unlike my head hair which, ironically, has grown faster than celebrities' egos on IACGMOOH! Meanwhile, the forest that used to reside on my legs, back and chest is but a distant memory that I fondly hark back to when opening a photograph album. Still, no waxing needed. That's one positive from the situation!
Compared to many others, I consider myself, despite my young age at DX (46) to be very lucky. I remain asymptomatic save for two breasts that most flat chested girls would die for and a level of fatigue I never knew existed. I think my good fortune is helped by the anti anxiety drug Citalopram which I take to curtail my usual catastrophist outlook on life. Each time I visit my consultant, they appear amazed as though I should be in excruciating pain somewhere. No doubt, the pain will come as it inexorably does when the cancer becomes more advanced, but I hope my weakening the course by the drugs I am taking will make that moment a long time in the future.
Three years ago, when my PSA rose from an undetectable to 0.06, I gave myself two years to live. Every niggle was bone pain, every ouch was metastasis. I was wrong then and as hard as it has been to get around the fact that even at the young age of 54 I am very much dying of prostate cancer, I do also very much intend making it to 60. Only the gods have the answer as to whether I will actually reach that age but if I do, I shall set new goals, perhaps two years at a time - and who knows, by then, some revolutionary new treatment may be available to push back the tide even further.
The thing about PCA is that even if two men are a similar age, have precisely the same PSA and Gleason score, the treatment path will often be different and the outcome will most certainly be different. As Lyn rightly advises, there are almost 30 types of PCA - so it really is an unfathomable mountain to climb in treating it correctly.
I also know and appreciate that there are people on this forum who are in a great deal of distress, pain and with secondary or related problems to their cancer. There are also an equal number of newbies with their heads clouded by a recent diagnosis and not knowing who to turn to. What they want most of all is to be told that it is all one big bad dream, a mistake and that their cancer is either completely curable or that it was all one big bad dream. I and many others were in that newbie camp once. What a wonderful thing then that this forum brings together such kindred spirits in varying degrees of need, support, advice, nay often desperation such as in my own case all those years ago. A place where definitive answers cannot be provided but where hope, support, comfort and yes, love, are all on tap from the wonder that is the human spirit. The size of the hearts of the people on this forum are legendary.
I have gained far more than I have given to this forum and I feel guilty for that. However, people who know me on here will understand the tremendous demons I faced in the early years. But that is the beauty of the PC forum. You can give and take as much or as little as you need. You can tap in, read from the sidelines, be a frequent or infrequent contributor. You will not be judged. I have never been - and just know when I post, my words may in some small way help others at an earlier stage as I seek help and support myself.
So, without rambling on too much further and as Christmas and the New Year approaches, I want to raise a glass of fine red, a cool glass of white, a schooner of the very best Manzanilla sherry, a shot glass of Wyborowa plum vodka or a flagon of cloudy ale, whatever your predilection to a year of highs and lows, ups and downs and to celebrate the fact that we have so many wonderful men and women in here ready to give of their time. May you all have the very best Christmas that is possible in your situation, may you create wonderful memories together and please, whichever is your God, if at all, may 2017 be a year when the numbers of the fallen stay low and where hope continues to remain the watchword on here and in all of our lives.
I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Cheers!
Bazza
(Barry)
Edited by member 21 Dec 2016 at 20:08
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