Personal Update

David,

Sure hope you find out soon the cause of your pain. Looking on the bright side, your relatively low PSA would suggest that the pain is not caused by mets to the bones.

Hope you find something great to do this weekend.

Sandy

Purgatory said...


Hope you are doing ok. Your PSA number look amazingly great, especially considering that you are Gleason 9.

david in sc

The treatment protocol I followed appears to have gone well in that In have had a minimum of side effects and my version of PCa seems to be very androgen dependent since there was a good response to HT in terms of knocking the PSA down. And my side effects appear more related to HT than radiation, though I do have some urgency in urination that are most likely caused by radiation. But not surprising I guess since I had a total of 145 units!

Major issue for me right now is that I am recuperating from rotary cuff surgery, done in early August, and the difficulty and pain from recuperation has taken my mind completely off prostate cancer, at least for the time being. You probably noticed that I have not been on the forum much recently, and that is due in large part to the fact that the simple act of typing was impossible for about six weeks, and even now causes some pain. I am now almost three months out from the surgery but still in physical therapy and in a lot of pain. But at least I am probably beyond the point where I could re-tear the repair to the tendon and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sancarlos

San Carlos,

I had noticed you abscence from HW, and wondered what was going. Sounds like a bit of a rough recovery for you there going on. Where are you doing your physical therapy at? I suspended mine this week, as my dr. and I wanted to see if it made things better or worse by not attending my 2 weekly sessions. Kind of felt guilty. I go on Tuesday and Thursdays, and after the Tuesday visit, it takes me all day Wednesday to get over it, then back again on Thursday. The later sessions always make me feel worse going into the weekends. I am suppose to start again next week, but still undecided.

Hope they got some good pain control going on for you. That has made a huge difference in me the past month or so, hasn't eliminated all the pain, but makes it much more managable for me in-between. To be honest, the pain issue the past 3 months has been so intense, that I rarely think much about my actual PC situation. Might be just as well.

I am still very impressed with your PC journey, your's can give some good hope to other men with higher gleason scores. My oncologist remarked that often Gleason 8/9's can run a more predictable course and can be managed better than expected, than some of the agressive Glesson 7's like I appearently have. He said they can be very unpredictable and much more difficult to control with some variants.

I will know soon enough, late December when I end my 6 month break from having PSA tests. Hoping to be wrong when the time comes, but I fully expect my number to have grown from the 5.8 in June, to perhaps 12-15. We will see. I meet with my oncologist on January 4th, and he said we can re-group and stratagize at that point, depending on the outcome, and if any thing shows when I get this new PET scan done soon.

In the meantime, the game plan is to keep me out of pain as much as possible, and not to let the mind go nuts thinking about the cancer. This year, 2011, has been the first year in 4 years that I haven't had to have an operation(s), so I am thankful for that. They were getting way too familiar with me at St. Francis in Greenville, especially the operating room nurses, lol.

Hope you continue to do so well, and that you pain will fade as you finish recovering from your latest operation.

Your friend,

David in SC

San Carlos,

I know where the Powdersville center is, pass it all the time heading to I-85, but they only do the Onocolgy Rehab at the new St. Francis, the one that use to be called the Women's Hopsital, I think its called Eastside now.

Counting the rehab I did at Easley Baptist, I have now been in rehab for nearly a year. Some feel I will do worse if I stop, yet my doctor is suspcious is that it is causing me harm than good. It's a tough call sometimes. Without the rehab, I probably wouldn't have any exercise at all, and even I see that as a danger.

Hope you do well too.

David