ADT therapy; waiting for side effects

Dear all,

I'm a relative newcomer here, with a confirmed diagnosis just over a month old and having started hormone therapy a little over two weeks ago.

I'm wondering if some of you more experienced guys could tell me a bit about how long it took for your side effects to make themselves felt, whether you were still getting new side effects months in, etc. At just two weeks and a couple of days, I'm certainly noticing a drastically reduced libido--but then again that could just be the anxiety of all of this doing a number on my libido instead. I don't have any other symptoms to speak of yet.

So: a small part of me worries that the drug isn't doing anything; another small part of me begins to think, hey this hormone therapy isn't too bad, I still feel fine!

But the largest and rational part of me just figures that I don't know anything yet and it all takes a while. I'd appreciate hearing from others what your own timelines were for various side effects appearing.

Thanks as always for the help and support.

As you are noticing it is pretty hard to separate the side effects of HT from the effects of anxiety about the side effects of HT. One question: What sort of HT are you on? If you are on a GNRH agonist (like Lupron or Trelstar) then your testosterone level will actually go up (for about a week) before it crashes and stays at castrate levels. But if you are on a GNRH antagonist (like Firmagon) then it will start heading down right away.

My experience, and what my Oncologist told me to expect, and more to the point my oncologists nurse told me, is to expect most of the noticeable side effects to really hit after a few months (maybe 3 or 4 months). That's when the hot flashes really kick in, you will lose most of your body hair, your armpits will stop stinking, and you can expect to only need a shave once or twice a week. Thats also when lots of guys find antidepressants helpful (prozac also helps with the hot flashes, by the way.)

We have quite a few guys here whose hot flashes started earlier so that can happen. But figure three months for most of it.

There are a number of side effects that are cumulative and don't start to become a problem for much longer times. If you wind up on ADT for more than six months of active treatment, then you will need to worry about losing muscle mass, losing bone density and gaining weight. Those processes start earlier but they start to reach troublesome levels after 6+ months on HT.

Oh, and one more thing. You might want to add details of your HT to your signature (what drug(s) and when you started) and add the number of positive cores to your biopsy results. ... and you might fix the spelling of "Gleason".

Prof, The necessary last step in changing your signature is to notice that the change hasn't shown up and complain about it. That message complaining that you don't see your changes will *always* contain the changes. It never fails, as you can see by reading the message you just posted.

The effects creep in slowly...The hot flashes are among the first. One year on HT is not too bad..You can recover quickly from that..Two years, the effects become rather profound..Three years, there's no going back......

It was a month before I had any really identifiable SEs. Hot flashes started at just over a month into a 6 month shot. I had all of the mentioned SEs in that six months. Uro let me have a holiday. It took almost 9 months for the SEs to go away, but then PSA shot up. Did another 6 month shot. Just at the end (Dec '14), PSA started back up again, so they've cancelled my holidays and added Casodex. In March we'll review, likely add Zytiga.

At this point the SEs are a daily albatross.

I agree that SEs took about three weeks to appear. Mine were hot flashes, joint pain, fatigue. Five months since my last lupron shot I still get hot flashes and joint pain and some fatigue but the latter is probably from radiation as well. IMHO ADT sucks the worst of all treatments.
Bob