External Beam RT and HDR Brachytherapy - my path

Ah no, I have a fairly close cropped full beard, except trimmed around the edges. Now that it's all grey or white, it looks more like a goatee on Zoom.

I did used to work with a guy who was at the time in the Guinness Book Of Records as having the longest moustache in the UK. A great character at customer meetings, and a few times a year, he'd be late in because he was on one of the breakfast TV shows having his 'tache unrolled and measured.

Anecdotally, there seems to be two key patterns:
- the side effects take the same amount of time to go as the amount of time you were on HT
- side effects which appeared very quickly when you started HT tend to disappear quickly when you stop, whereas side effects which developed over a long period of time take a long time to get rid of

Some side effects are permanent for almost all men (e.g. dry orgasms), some are permanent for the men who experience them (moobs and changes to the pelvis) and others might be permanent for some men but not all (like hot flushes)

Edited by member 01 Jan 2022 at 23:34  | Reason: typo

Thank you Andy, Dave, Lyn and Peter,

Loss of Libido would have to be one side effect which comes on quickly but doesn't return until testosterone levels rise again surely?

The body composition fat v muscle battle seems unwinable until testosterone returns.

There's a question in my mind about how much part testosterone powered drive plays in sustaining effort at something like cycling for a couple of hours or more. 12 months into HT/Zoladex and about 3 months past RT I hit a low point in my riding endurance but now, about a year and a half in, I think I've come to terms with not having the "inspiration" of testosterone supporting me and my average riding speed is on the way back up.

Much as Zoladex is a life saver, I'll still be glad to be off it and back to the point where some testosterone reappears [hopefully, since I'm 74]

Jules

Edited by member 02 Jan 2022 at 00:52  | Reason: Not specified

Thanks Lyn, that's interesting. Seems to indicate that Zoladex is doing more than just suppressing testosterone and something else is freed up by the disappearance of Z.

Jules

That's pretty funny Peter and possibly a good thing that it wasn't permanent.

Jules

After my last hormone therapy jab ran out in Dec 2020, my Testosterone returned between Oct-Dec 2021 (measured at 19.7nmol/l in Dec).

Some things I've noticed which I wasn't necessarily expecting...

I'd always been quite happy with low room temperatures, but over the past few years which does coincide with hormone therapy, I'd got less tolerant to this and had the heating turned up higher. I seem to be OK with lower room temperatures again now, so I now think this may be related to hormone therapy.

As mentioned in another thread, breast pain and I think some breast growth kicked off again when my Testosterone returned. I had stopped taking Tamoxifen a while back, but still available on prescription, so I restarted it and that's fixed this.

My blood glucose levels which were at the low end of normal before treatment had increased to the high end of normal. My monthly readings have been coming back down for a few months now and this morning are back to low end of normal. Emphasises the importance of monitoring blood glucose levels while on hormone therapy. Anyone starting out from a higher level my well go into pre-diabetes or even diabetes.

However, my weight has, if anything, gone up in last few months. Need some better cycling weather.

Edited by member 28 Feb 2022 at 12:32  | Reason: Not specified

We have both recently purchased new road bikes which are sitting forlornly in the garage with all the others! John is taking his out to France next week and hoping to get a few hundred KMs under his belt ... which has had to be loosened a number of notches recently. Perhaps you should jump in the car and join him there Andy?

I had an inspection, which confirmed radiation proctitis. It wasn't sufficiently thorough to rule out bleeding from elsewhere though. Just before the PCa diagnosis, I'd had a sigmoidoscopy screening to check for bowel cancer, and that came back completely clear, and you can't generally get bowel cancer so soon after a clear screening. I'm told they don't do the routine sigmoidoscopy screening anymore, it's just poo-on-a-stick nowadays. At the recent colorectal inspection, the consultant said there's no need to do anything about it, as it's not serious or making me anemic, but she did give me the rectal steroid foam to try if I wanted to. I haven't done that yet as it was getting better by itself, but it may have reached the limit on that and perhaps I should.

My oncologist was also surprised by the gynecomastia on return of Testosterone as he hadn't come across that before, and asked if the Tamoxifen was working, which it is - instantly stopped the pain, and has also reversed the breast gland growth, almost to nothing. It has no effect on breast fat growth (moobs) though. I've been able to steadily reduce the Tamoxifen dose - initially until the pain returned, but I think that's probably finished now and just continuing long enough to completely reverse the breast gland growth, which is almost done now.

Edited by member 11 May 2022 at 04:53  | Reason: Not specified