My 3 men contd

Dad's PSA has risen to over 0.6 which gives a still reasonable doubling time of 12 months. GP has advised to go to 3 monthly tests; I told him I think the GP is spooking him unnecessarily but will see what happens next time.

John's next test is on Tuesday and onco the following week.

Well, well, well ... have I got news for you.

I went to John's onco appointment with all guns blazing tonight. John had a ridiculous discussion with the nurse last week about his PSA test - she claimed never to have heard of the ultrasensitive test and insisted she had never done one, even faced with the evidence of 7 years of results to 2 or 3 decimal places. When he went yesterday to get the result, he was told it was "fine" at 0.1 and no, there was definitely no sideways hat - but when he looked at the screen he could see the < sign. No, she didn't know that was a 'less than' sign. I mean, these are graduate nurses ffs.

Anyway, I was livid today but Mr B took the wind out of my sails sharpish. Our hospital, a large leading oncology centre, has concluded that the ultrasensitive test is unreliable and made a decision to do away with it completely. Completely. Mr B said he had been extremely concerned at John's last two apparent rises but they are now convinced that it is a technical variance issue of the machines. I think that is pretty much what Mr P (the uro) was telling us when he said a couple of years ago that the same sample could vary from 0.02 - 0.05 if you tested it twice but I never imagined that the hospital would just call a halt to them entirely.

Accepting the view of experts (why wouldn't I, it is a highly respected centre of excellence) John has had 5 years of <0.1 and should in Mr B's words "consider himself in remission"

It will be interesting to see if other hospitals follow suit.

BFN

Julie X

Yes but science moves forward Bri and what they thought was trustworthy 4 or 5 years ago may not have been after all. Maybe you and John would never have had salvage RT if you had only ever had the normal PSA test - or maybe you would have had it a few months later when your PSA became officially detectable. We will never know.

Eleanor, I think you are drunk.

Julie, in the real world I have a mouth like a sewer. It's the nature of the work.

Lyn, that really is great news for you and John.

Interesting story about bloods, i have had mine done at the hospital every four weeks for over four years, and except when i was on Chemo when the bloods are all over the place i can just tell they are mine all pretty similar to the month before.

After starting Abbi they started testing for cholesterol and just continued but over the last six months it has been creeping up so was advised to see my GP, now this was 3 days after having my bloods at the Hospital.

My GP did all of my bloods and these are tested at a different hospital, when they came back they was nothing like the blood results that i normally get.

Just a couple that stood out, Cholesterol every month at the hospital around 7.0 to 7.5 at the GP 5.1, ALP is always around the 40 mark at the GP 29.

I guess the only difference is at the hospital they are tested straight away and i get the results in just over an hour and at the GP surgery the nurse takes the blood then they are tucked in her knicker elastic for 8 hours then slung in the back of a van and driven 30 miles and then the next day someone gets round to testing them.

So i have disregarded all of the bloods but i am sure the GP cholesterol is correct http://community.prostatecanceruk.org/editors/tiny_mce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-sealed.gif

Si xx