Hi Peggles, because your husband and I are very similar, same stage, same choices, and same Gleason score, I was wondering how you are getting on?
Since I was last in touch, I've made real progress as I prepare for my choice (radiotherapy) by working through my 3 months hormone therapy.
To start, I had pills for one month, then onto injections with an overlap of two weeks. As soon as I started the pills, I was wiped out from time to time with a withering fatigue. I felt too tired to go to sleep. I was concerned that this would get worse when I had even more hormones when the injections started. I don't know why, and I don't really care why, the fatigue immediately disappeared and I feel better than I have for a long time.
Had I made the right choice of having radiotherapy? It's amazing how our minds can confuse us when we are lying awake, thinking, at 3.00am. I remember being told by the consultant that whilst radiotherapy might well have advantages re. Side effects, the downside was that it made further treatment very difficult if it was required. I convinced myself that the scenario could well be that my PSA would again rise, but nothing could be done, and I'd just wait for the inevitable.
I understood if I needed more advice, I could phone one of the specialist nurses at the urology department. So I did just that, and she got me back on track, and my new scenario is that the radiotherapy has every chance of solving it, but even if it didn't It would probably be controlled by long term hormone therapy. In fact the same might be true for surgery, or watchful waiting.
So why am I wasting my life worrying about it? Don't know, so I'm not!. I'll be around for many years to annoy people.
The moral of this story? Our imaginations can be our worst enemy, realism is our best friend