Posted 10/13/2016 12:01 AM (GMT 0)
tallman, I wish that your LDR Brachytherapy is completely successful. But don't let your guard down. If you see gradual rise in PSA, make sure your urologist and RO take note of that. Let me tell you what happened to me.
I had brachytherapy for Gleason 3 + 3 cancer in June 2011. My PSA went down from pretreatment value of 3.4 to 0.1 by December 2012. Then I had a small PSA bounce to 0.2 and the PSA came down to 0.1 by December 2013. After that I started to have slow rise to 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 between December 2013 and July 2015. In July 2015, I mentioned it to my urologist. He brushed it off saying that it is so insignificant that I would live to be 100 without my cancer coming back. Guess what by July 2016 my PSA rose to 1.5. This time urologist took note and performed a DRE. He found a very hard nodule that prompted him to order a biopsy immediately. The biopsy result was very unusual. Entire prostate was benign. But a large cancerous mass emanated from the prostate. An MRI discovered a 24 mm x 22 mm x 25 mm cancerous mass pushing against the rectum. The urologist, the RO who performed my brachytherapy (he has performed about 2000 brachytherapys) and medical oncologist all said it is very unusual. They have never come across such a case ever. Now I am going to have cyberknife and HT.
Telling my story is not to scare anybody. After all what happened to me is so unusual, it is extremely unlikely anyone else will be in the same predicament as me.