PSA SIGNIFICANT INCREASE POST ERT

Dave, hope all goes well next week. Hopefully your results and meetings will give you reasons to be a bit more optimistic. 

Thanks Chris 

Dave , I wasn't going to have surgery, but I did. Why would I have surgery I wasn't ill, why put myself through all those side effects. I wasn't got to have salvage RT pretty much the same reasons. I definitely wasn't going to have a lifetime on HT, but I have. I did reduce the dosage for a while and I am trying to get the balance of meds right. There is perhaps a big difference between being 77 & 74, I know I can't do what I could 3 years ago. You sound a lot more active than me. As I has said to others you can always stop the HT if it gets to much. I was hoping to be gone before I was 75 , something has changed that attitude in my head,not sure what.

CJ, another member on here had a similar out look , he even hopped off the anesthetic table. Hopefully he will come along with words of wisdom.

Take care .

Thanks Chris 

As you've said yourself, a slow rise is a good rise. 

Given the amount of time that's passed since your original treatment, you might well be able to have some form of focal therapy, without either HT or Chemo, if required. Old Barry is always the benchmark on this one.

Jules

Dave, just for info after my PSMA at city my PSA did rise by 0.2, not sure why, perhaps just time and progression. After my other two PSMA scans using a different tracer the PSA did again rise quickly. It is now back to 0.04 since starting HT and hopefully the rises were a temporary effect of the tracer. 

Thanks Chris 

Update. Saw consultant today. PSA 4.5, doubling time by my calc 5 months. Spread to pelvic lymphs, too many for SABR. None in gland so no point to RP.

No complicated decisions for me to make about what (if any) treatment.

Standard procedure. Bicalutamide tabs, 4 weeks starting today, decapeptyl injections, 1st at hospital next week, thereafter at GPs (that'll be hit and miss!). 

See consultant again in 6 weeks and then decide on HT alone, or with tabs, or with tabs and chemo.  He called it "single, double or triple". I THINK he favoured double, chemo held back for later. So do I.

Good bits, not bones. Bad bit doubling time and that one or more of positive lymphs on "pathway" from pelvic to abdominal area (last bit my reading of the Report).

Overall we agreed not good but could be worse. Guess I'll try the recommended, very much standard, route for 6 months and then reconsider. 

Some incidental findings of PSMA PET scan suggest life expectancy pretty limited anyway. 

Just hope HT side effects as benign as before and for 2 years after original RT treatment.

Onward but most definitely downward!

dave.

^ Thanks, Jules. Yes, slightly on the worse side of what I was expecting. "Not good, could have been worse" sums it up I think. 

Clock ticking down, 12-24 mths to go I predict..... but would have been much the same irrespective of cancer.

My younger-self's life style was not conducive to longevity. 55 years ago none would have put money on my reaching 30! And when I finally quit the drink 22 years ago I was within a couple of months of death. 

Life is relative. The children's cancer ward is adjacent to Oncology Outpatients. Puts my experience into perspective -  I have no reason nor right to feel that I have been dealt a bad hand. Quite the contrary.

Best wishes to all,

dave.

Hi again, Dave.

I'm also very sorry that your disease is metastatic.

I've just turned 69 years. According to a 'good book', I should 'pop me clogs' at three score plus ten. I wonder if prostate cancer was about back then? If so statisically at least one of the ten disciples must have had it.

I'd better make the best of the next twelve months.

Joking apart, mate. Like you, my debauchery should have seen me off years ago. All I can do, is hope that you, like many on here have done, make a mockery of Pca mortality statistics.

Good luck, mate.