Pain Question...

Hi all,
My father completed his radiation/chemo treatments a little over a month ago. Been going through various side effects and a lot of pain. Hard to say if his pain is increasingly bad due to progression, or if he is building a tolerance to narcotics in general. Most of his pain was in the penis and rectum. He was on as much as 30mg dilaudid -shots- every 4 hours, and 10mg breakthrough shots on the hour...
At the moment, they seem to be controlling it better with fentanyl patches. 200mg total worth of patches. With that, he has only taken one 10mg dilaudid breakthru a day...
No idea if this will all let up eventually, or if it will continue to get worse. He isn't scheduled to have his PSA checked for the first time since treatment until August...

Anyway.....question......for those of you who didn't have your prostate removed, and instead had radiation, did you get the bad penis pain? Is it nerve damage. or the prostate pressing out on the nerves?? Did it eventually let up?

Oh, still need to update my signature. He is now foley-free, but has a superpubic catheter. His doctor has told him he could clamp it off if he wanted to try to pee through his penis, but he is afraid if he tries that, it might make the pain much worse...

Thanks

Thanks David. Yes, it is very frustrating, especially not knowing really what is going on, if it will get better, if it is a sign things are getting worse. And we get very differing opinions from different docs.
He hasn't had any bleeding for a while which is a welcome change, and the lymphidema he was getting in his legs seemed to clear up after a course of Lasix. For the most part he is dealing with pain bouts, doesn't like not peeing, and he is depressed, but refuses to take the anti-depressant his doctor offered him......<sigh>...
He is also on gabapentin, but hard to say if it is helping or not...