Posted 10/10/2009 9:56 PM (GMT 0)
Don't be shy about learning all you can about anything that may benefit your quality of life, quality of treatments and options you have as a patient. You like some others of us have entered into 'limbo land' you don't know exactly how it all will go, and frankly your docs do not know with absolute certainty either, although they have seen many patients and have clinical experience, yada..yada. Don't panic you should do well in any event, my stats were really bad and non-curative status, including total urinary blockage. Well I am doing very well thus far and it is 7.7 yrs. now since seeing the emergency room. This should give some hope to others whom are in limbo land (aka the jungle of PCa)- sometimes I call it the Twlight Zone- it can be that bizzare, it is weirder than fiction at times and looks so unreal, that an outsider would say you are kidding, aren't you. We wish it were a dream, but it is not.
Lupron, zoladex, eligard, and other LHRH drugs will work on the majority of PCa cases and patients and do there thing....the question is for how or how well you may tolerate such, too. It does not hurt a patient to look down the road and listen up to anything that could be of value to you either now or later on. There was a study at John Hopkins recently about long term useage of LHRH drugs as perhaps causing more viralent PCa to deal with, maybe truthful (might not), myself I question everything, and have good reasons to in my history with PCa.
This also depends on your perspective, do you go with whatever a doc says is your perhaps 'only protocol and methods'? Do you get envolved in frank discussions about possibly going intermitttent on drugs at some time frame, optional drugs, no drugs, second opinion ok with your current doc? If you study the cr_p out of this and read plenty and read PCa newsletters and get multi-opinions you will see this PCa is far from black and white, and docs don't agree on identical treatments/protocols.....and with real reasons. Hope is eternal, support can be beautiful (like from folks herein) and new stuff is being discovered. After about 2 yrs. go by you will have a different perspective or reflect differently on PCa, than you probably do right now. When it is newer and in your face and looking dismal it is hard to shake off, even daily what you are dealing with. When you see stabilization of psa numbers and some more time goes by and realize you are still here, then you might restart the living portion of your life and you probably will smell and taken in the roses and the details of living, more so than ever before.
Livin Lavida Loca- large glass, sunnyday