Still doing battle

Nccajun, you two have been through quite a bit of ups and downs. I admire both of you for your fortitude. I wish the absolute best for both of you going forward.
I am probably out of my league for this question, but does your husband qualify for the fairly new Pluvicto treatment? It seems to be working well for a couple of members here.
Again, my prayers and best wishes to both of you.
Jack

Thanks guys. It has been a battle from day one, but neither of us were ready for the wait and die approach. I have not heard of Pluvicto treatment...will definitely look into it. We absolutely LOVED our first oncologist, had 10000% trust in him; however, I don't trust this one at all. In fact, we're trying to get our radiation oncologist to look at the scans before our December appointment to see if she agrees that we should wait.

****UPDATE*** Our radiation oncologist looked at scans, and at first was a little leery about radiating that spot. So we headed to MD Anderson at the end of October to do a simulation to make sure that there was not any overlap with the previous spot. She said that was the only way she could be 100% certain. Thankfully, she said he was good to go, so he had 5 radiation treatments to the bone mets to the rib. She also said that he has another spot kinda in between the new spot and the old spot, and that she was not wanting to radiate that one....due to possible bone fracture. She's deferring that one to the medical oncologist, who has not said one word about this spot!!!

Even though it was relatively short trip(days wise), it was a very long trip. Danny ended up in ER twice due to blood pressure going very very low. His white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelet counts were all down since August. Nobody seemed to know why. Odd thing was that he had one last blood test the day before we headed home, and all the counts came up drastically....still low, but not as bad. We've been home three weeks, and he still feels pretty miserable. Blood pressure still down some, but nothing too scary.

Since he switched to Xtandi to Zytiga a couple years, his fatigue has gotten so much worse, The neurologist we saw really can't give us any positive things about his leg neuropathy. Between neuropathy and fatigue, there are days that he doesn't can't leave the house...sometimes a week at a time. We researched PLUVICTO and Danny wasn't very receptive to it because he already has a lot of the common and serious side effects; plus he only has one kidney. In fact, he opted out of the contrast on the PSMA test last month because his kidney function results were little worse than they were in August. We're starting to feel between a rock and hard place...he's gotten new bone mets while taking Xtandi and if he stops taking it, maybe his fatigue will lessen. But if he stops taking it, maybe he'll start getting more lesions at once instead of one at a time. We feel that as long as the mets come one at at time and we catch them small, we're still beating the beast!!!!

Hey Michael,

While he was taking chemo, he was on Lupron. When he had the cystoprostatectomy in 2013, his testicles were removed as well. That way we didn't have to worry about testosterone ebbs and flows. We 've been very aggressive since the beginning in fighting the beast.

Hi Glen,
He was put on Lupon before starting chemo to get testosterone level down, because ductal prostate cancer really thrives on the hormone. Even though there was a lot of cancer in the area, about the only place that didn't have cancer was in his testicles. His prostate, bladder, seminal vessels, urethra, both ureters, prostate urethra, rectum wall, and multiple lymph nodes all had cancer in or around them. After successful rounds of chemo, Danny had surgery that removed his prostate, bladder, vessels, testicles, multiple lymph nodes, part of ureters and urethras were all removed. We knew there would be consequences by doing this, but we also thought it would help fight this beast. You have to realize that at the time, we were really more worried about Danny living than what would happen in the future because survival of ductal prostate cancer after 5 years is very slim.
Knowing what we know now, would we do the same strategy???? Yes we would!!! When he was first diagnosed we didn't have any optimism that he would live longer than a year or two. In fact, we had a radiation oncologist tell us at Duke that he wouldn't do any treatment at all because of the extensiveness of the cancer and what he was going to have to go thru.....that was unacceptable to us. So we ventured to MD Anderson and have been fighting ever since. Some days the fight is harder than others, but we are still fighting.