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Advice please for Dad - Hormone Therapy,Side effects

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User
Posted 22 Apr 2017 at 14:28

Hi , my dad has recently been diagnosed with Prostate Cancer after weeks of MRI/Bone Scan/ blood tests and such and has a Score of 5.5 and then the other from the biopsies were 3 & 4.

As dad is  frail man with other health issues, one Urologist told him he would advise the route of 'watch and wait' and then we saw a second Urologist in the care team who after seeing the last MRI prescribed dad the Hormone Treatment (Cyproterone tablets for 3weeks and then the depot injection Prostap 3DC every 3months) which dad agreed to. Now however, the side effects of that Hormone Treatment have truly kicked in and boy are they not great!!!

He has night sweats with his leukaemia but what is getting him down is the Fatigue and utter exhaustion where even climbing the stairs is too much.

Can anyone tell us if this will continue throughout the treatment or will the symptoms ease off??

We are waiting for the Oncologist appointment where there are a list of questions ready to ask, as one minute he was told he wouldn't be a candidate for Radiotherapy as the Cancer was contained within the Prostate and now, that is the main reason for the Oncologist referral.

So I know there is a huge amount of information on here about all aspects, but if I can help him with information from other people going through the same thing then maybe that will help him more.

Thanks in advance.

 

 

User
Posted 22 Apr 2017 at 20:31

Gosh, that seems quite a muddle for you all. If he also has leukaemia I can understand why the first specialist advised active surveillance (watch and wait is rarely used these days).

From your information, I am interpreting that his PSA score was 5.5 at diagnosis? That should start to fall quite quickly now he is on hormone treatment (HT) as the cancer will be starved of testosterone (which is what it feeds on).

3+4 is his Gleason score so he is a G7(3+4) or G7(4+3) - that tells you how distorted the majority of cancer cells are. A 3+4 is slightly better than 4+3.

For many men, the fatigue stays all the way through the treatment. HT also reduces muscle mass and loosens the ligaments, particularly round the pelvis and hips, which adds to the fatigue and heavy limbs. Basically, the HT is feminising your dad's body. He may also start to grow boobs, which can be uncomfortable and sometimes very painful. Prostate Cancer UK was running a programme for men who suffer extreme fatigue - you could phone the number at the top of this web page and ask the specialist nurses about it? We had a long standing member here who was in a wheelchair until he took up swimming and found that really helped him to combat the fatigue AND get mobile again.

There seems to be some confusion about the radiotherapy thing - maybe they didn't explain it very well or maybe dad misheard? Either he was a candidate for RT because the cancer was contained OR he wasn't a candidate for RT because the cancer wasn't contained. They may have initially discounted RT as an option because of some other medical reason (maybe his leukaemia is a complicating factor?) but they wouldn't say no to RT because it is contained in the gland.

I hope that helps a bit?

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." Soren Kierkegaard

 
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