Just got a PSA of 209 today and scared to death

As you can see my PSA was 209..I generally feel well but do have back and neck stiffness. With that high score, I suspect Bone Mats. I know that many on this board have had higher PSA's and many have lived 10+ years. I will be getting a biopsy Friday as well as a bone scan and MRI, but I am not optimistic.

As far as me goes, I am 55 years old, jog 4 miles a day, do not smoke and live a healthy life...This is the most cruel fate Mother Nature could have thrown at me.

I feel that I should have smoked all my life, not exercised and at least then I would not feel so bad as I can say that I deserved it.

Do I have any hope with a PSA of 209?

I will keep you updated on all other upcoming labs but feel so alone right now.

As Tony says, you have plenty of hope and you are certainly not alone now you have found this forum.

Once you are able to provide more details from the biopsy and scans, there will be plenty of advice and support from the very experienced and knowledgable members of this forum.

Be grateful you were not a smoker and do exercise. Being in peak fitness will place you in a good position to battle whatever might be thrown at you.

I know it's a scary time, particularly when you are waiting for test results. We have all been there to some degree or another, but once you have the facts, then you can go about taking some action. In the meantime browse this forum and learn as much as you can so that you are well informed if you do need to take some action.

All the best.

Chas

Welcome to HW geop and sorry that you have found the need to be here.

I am fairly new here myself, so don’t feel qualified to offer advice, but will support you any way that I can. I will leave all the technical advice to those more experienced members and you will shortly find many of those who will drop by soon, so just hang on there.

I honestly don’t think that a healthy life style has much to do with the fact if we get PC or not. After reading other guys threads here I have found that there are many that state a similar life style as yours, yet still have PC. Of course, eating and living healthy must go a long way, but I don’t think it is the trump card. I have smoked most of my life and due to my work did little exercise. My eating habits were never that good either, but I never had any health problems until I hit 60. Pay back time I hear you saying, but I don't think it is. I gave up smoking 3 years ago, but with recent events I have started again. Stupid I know, but right now it is working for me. Once I can get my final results in and treatment started then I am looking to kick the smoking thing once and for all and focus on the journey that lays ahead.

A healthy life style is a big bonus when fighting PC, but I think the main weapon in the fight is your faith that you can beat this thing (if you have it) For me anyway it is more a mental battle and I am pretty strong in that department.

All the very best to you. Keep us posted on you journey. You will be amazed at the help and support that you will find here, should you need it.

geop. Just another thought that I have had regarding your "healthy lifestyle" comment.

It is a documented fact that about 80% of guys aged 80 will have some degree of PC, although may never know it. But you cant say that all 80% of them smoked, were couch potatoes and ordered in pizza every night. So don't assume that a healthy life style will guard you against PC. The "beast" takes on all comers, no matter what.

Like Worried Guy just said, your numbers are high, but it is not a death sentence. So go grab yourself a bear and order in a pizza. Oh! and why not try one of those big fancy cigars to wash it all down with.

This is a pretty darn big bus we are all riding on here, but there are plenty of seats left should you want a ride. We hope that you wont.

We are all here waiting to help and support you. Just shout and we will reply.

All the very best to you.

Casper.

GeoP,

you said...
Do I have any hope with a PSA of 209?

I dunno. Did you have any hope before your PSA? Because, for the most part, you should still have the same hopes now. You haven't been diagnosed with anything yet, and there is a good chance it won't be prostate cancer, but if it is, then if I had to guess, I would expect that with your PSA you can expect the medical profession to annoy you for a long, long time -- decades and decades. But they won't annoy you all the time -- once you get past the first couple of months, which can be a bit of a pain in the ass (literally in the case of the biopsy) it settles back to a few hours every couple of months.

What you do with the rest of your time is up to you.

Welcome to HW.

There is plenty of hope. If it does turn out to PC there are plenty of treatments to keep it at bay for years, if not decades. The treatments won't be fun and normal will change, but you'll still be alive and kicking.

Hang in there and keep us updated on your progress.
Andrew

I know how you feel about the smoking, eating right, exercising thing. My wife wanted us to be vegetarians 10 years ago and I agreed, reluctantly. We've always exercised regularly. She used to tell me that a vegetarian diet provided some protection against some cancers, including prostate cancer. My response was if I got PC then I was going back to eating meat.

As soon as I complete proton treatment in mid January I'm back to a big juicy hamburger, steak, chicken. I'll keep exercising, but it's meat for me now on.

Welcome aboard Geop!

Be thankful that you have had a healthy life. If you get DX with PCa, you will be in great shape to deal with the treatment you select to fight it.

As my urologist said right after he told me "You have prostate cancer", he said "from this point on, your life is going to change". It will, but not necessarily for the worst. You have already found us, and we are a pretty neat bunch of cyber friends.

Good luck with your biopsy and other tests

Bill from Florida

geop said...
Thanks for your warm and uplifting comments guys. I will get results by next week and with all of your support we will fight this beast and we'll be still posting each other 10+ years from now.

I will update you with my results

Thats the spirit my man! It took me a while to step into warrior mode, because when I first came here I was pretty much in the same frame of mind as you are right now, but all the great guys and girls here gave me hope and the ammunition to fight. I am just glad I found this place.

One of the guys who has just responded to you Todd1963 had a PSA of over 3000 (yes that was a surprise to me as well. I never knew it could run that high) when diagnosed 8 years ago, but he is still here posting today, so never say never.

When you get your results it would help if you can update your profile and include them in each post as you can see at the bottom of my post here. That way it will help people to give the best advice according to your stats.

Good luck and please keep us posted. We do care.

Big Mac said...
As my urologist said right after he told me "You have prostate cancer", he said "from this point on, your life is going to change". It will, but not necessarily for the worst.

At the risk of going off message, I've always thought the guys who said prostate cancer changed their lives for the better were reaching.

You're going to be OK. Probably better than OK. But, truth in advertising, prostate cancer does sort of suck.

We'll hope your biopsy keeps you from qualifying for full membership in our club.

Post Edited (PeterDisAbelard.) : 11/19/2014 2:16:26 PM (GMT-7)

Todd,

I take your point that PCa can provide a salutary "whack up the side of the head" for a man who really needs one, but that said, I tend to give most of the credit for your rehabilitation to your astonishing wife.

Welcome to HW geop, sorry you need to be here, but you will get some great and diverse support here!

You have quite a high PSA, and in my opinion, you should prepare yourself for a positive diagnosis of PC. I don't want to be a pessimist or give you unnecessary worry, but statistics and studies warrant some amount of preparation. I had way to much time between my initial PSA of 84.7 and getting biopsy results; so I searched for “reliable” studies to understand my chances of having PC. Those studies indicated a 99-100% chance of cancer.

I can also tell you that during my search , I could not find any studies that would tell me what my chances were that the cancer had left the prostate, or how aggressiveness my cancer might be. That level of diagnosis could only be determined via a biopsy and CT/bone scans. .

BTW, since I have been here on HW I think I remember seeing one person with a high PSA come back here post-biopsy and state a negative PC result, maybe infection, can't remember (I should have save that post, it was encouraging).

There is a lot of hope, and many therapies available to you, no matter what your result are. I can tell you first hand that this place holds a wealth of knowledge, and a team of experienced folks, whom are all ready to direct you to pertinent information.

Stay with us and please keep us posted on your results. I'd love to have you come back and tell me, “ha ha I don't have PC”! If you do have PC, you've already showed us your fighting spirit!!!

All my best,

Dear Geop,

I want to send you a message of hope and encouragement tonight. A year ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer with an initial PSA over over 100 and it also included mets in both of my lungs. So I have walked in the shoes that you are walking in right now, with all the fear and anxiety that goes with the biopsies and tests and scans and the sleepless nights in between, waiting for results.

Meanwhile, over the course of the past year, they started me immediately on Lupon shots, which brought my PSA down close to 0.10. This past summer, I started the newly recommended plan of adding chemotherapy to the hormone shots. The chemotherapy (Taxotere) is typically given in 6 rounds, each 3 weeks apart, for a total of 18 weeks. The combination of the hormone shots plus the chemotherapy shots has brought my PSA down below 0.10, which seems miraculous to me. A year ago, I would never have believed that this could be possible. Facing the original diagnosis with a PSA of over 100 with the additional news of multiple mets in both lungs was very sobering, to say the least.

The Lupron shots cleared up ALL the lung mets within a few months, in my case. Adding the additional chemotherapy treatments has attacked some cancer cells that the Lupron shots can't always attack. My original urologist had to refer me on to an oncologist for the chemotherapy treatments. You sometimes have to push for this, as this chemotherapy approach added on to hormone therapy is a new approach that has only recently been recommended so early in one's diagnosis in cases like ours.

So I hope that you will find some hope and encouragement in my story. I truly believe your doctors will find help for you and get you started soon on some treatments that will help you. Keep in touch through this forum and let us know how you are doing. We are all in this together, standing side-by-side with you.

Sent with caring thoughts from someone traveling with you on this road,
ISU Cyclone Fan