Brachytherapy after effects

I started a brachytherapy support group last year for patients who have had or are considering brachytherapy.

Next meeting will be 11th March. There's always a peer-to-peer support section where those considering or recently had brachytherapy can ask questions of those further along the path.

Email me if you're interested support@prostate-brachytherapy.uk

prostate-brachytherapy.uk

Geoff, was this LDR/seed brachytherapy, or HDR (the timing of the side effects is different)?

Something that might help with the sleep - have a bottle to pee into next to the bed. Sitting on the side of the bed, having a quick pee, and then laying down to sleep again can be a lot less disturbance than getting up, walking to the bathroom, switch the (bright) light on, peeing, walking back to bed.

An empty large Innocent Smoothie bottle can work well. It has a wide opening, but a good fitting lid, so when you kick the bottle over in the morning...

Geoff, I had HDR Brachy (immediately following external beam radiotherapy) 17 months ago.

I just checked back in my diary, and it was about 2 months before I starting sleeping through some nights without needing to pee, and that happened progressively more often, and my bladder capacity was still improving at this point. So hang in there.

Also, how were you beforehand? If you got up to pee every night beforehand, I wouldn't expect that to be any better for a while longer. (I didn't need to pee overnight before treatment.)

I monitored my peak flow rate for some time afterwards. It dropped to a minimum about 3 months after the procedure, before recovering only a little. It then stayed like that for months, long enough I presumed that was my new norm, but at around 9 or 10 months after the HDR, it started improving, and a year later was almost back to starting point. (I haven't measured it more recently.)

So healing goes on for a long time after the procedure.

One thing that can happen is that people with prostate problems and/or going through prostate treatment adopt the mantra, "never pass a toilet". This is actually really bad, as it trains the bladder not to expect to fill up, and the bladder then adopts this is the norm. If you have been doing that during the daytime, now is the time to stop, and try going back to filling your bladder between peeing. Look up "bladder retraining", but basically, you adopt strategies to hold on for longer before peeing each time, to retrain your bladder to expect to fill up. You can't do bladder retraining during the night (it would stop you from sleeping), but doing it during the day will improve night time too.

Also good to be doing pelvic floor exercises, and they can help with the bladder retraining too.

Another thing, if you are peeing very slowly at night, it may be that you stop peeing before you empty your bladder. Hence, you are starting with a half-full bladder each time so it fills up faster. As a check on this, after you've pee'd, wait a minute, and have another pee (by relaxing, not forcing), and if there's still a reasonable amount, you didn't fully empty first time. This is called double voiding, and is a way to work around slow peeing. (you can keep doing it until you empty your bladder.) Another option would be to ask if you can take Tamsulosin to make peeing at night faster, which you would take with the last meal of the day.

Edited by member 07 Jan 2021 at 07:38  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Invicta, sorry to hear about your peeing problems. I’m thinking I will be going down the brachytherapy route as well, and this does worry me.

im just wondering, how were you before your treatment? I’m coming up towards 66, enjoy an active life style... running being my greatest thing. I never get up in the night to pee, although during the day pretty often. 

what about other side effects? I knew nothing about pc until about a month ago.

Now I need to become an expert...

as Forrest said ‘**** happens’....