I'm a fit and active mid 60 year old man. Ive been blessed with never having any health issue up to my PC diagnosis; indeed I had never spent a night in hospital up to now. I recall feeling great when I went in to have my 18 monthly blood test and check up last April.
I was surprised a few days later when I got a call from my local doctor to come in and see him..urgently. My PSA was 11, up from 2 at my last check up; he immediatly sent me in for a MRI, followed by a meeting with a urologist. A biopsy followed, and that resulted in a Gleason score of 9. I was then sent for a PET scan, and I arranged for a second opinion. This is all pretty standard, but even though there was a degree of urgency around my diagnosis, the process took about 12 weeks. In the end both the urologists I consulted strongly recomended the same thing; a radical robotic prostotectomy.
As most of you would know only too well, you have some very dark days (and nights) during this period. One of the most challenging things I found was telling people my diagnosis: saying those words "I've got cancer" elicits an amazing range of responses! Most are positive, a few are incredibly helpful, and I appreciate those more than I can say. Some friends burst into tears when I told them; I ended up consoling them! Others just didnt want to know..after a while I stopped telling people of my cancer diagnosis as the manageing the responses (even the good ones) proved to be pretty challenging for me. Which is about the worst thing you can do from a mental health perspective. Just saying...not a good idea to keep this to yourself.
I had the RRP in July 2022, and the recovery was OK. I started walking a lot (min 5-6 km a day) as soon as I could, and that excercise was very good in aiding my recovery and rebuilding fitness. I was back to almost normal activities in 12 weeks after surgery. The surgery was deemed sucessful by my urologist, though the he noted that there had been some "spread" of the cancer beyond the prostrate (consistant with the GS 9 score), and that constant checking every 12 weeks would be my life for the foreseeable future to ensure any comeback of the cancer would be indentified quickly. As at Jan 2023, my PSA was almost zero, so I'll see how it goes in the months ahead.
I hade my 3rd 3 monthly check up last week (April 2023) and good news so far; my PSA remains almost undetectable. My urologist now wants to see me every 6 months (rather than every 3 months), so thats a great relief!
A bit of not great news unfortunatly for me. After my RP (June 2022), my PSA was undetectable, but towards the end of 2023, my PSA started to rise. Slowly at first, but now is doubling every 3/4 months. My oncologist has advised that I will need to consider external beam radiation treatment when the PSA reaches 0.2/0.25, which at this stage will be in about September of this year. If it was up to me Id start having treatment immediately, but the advice is that the PSA needs to be about 0.25 so that cancer can be clkearly defined in a PET scan. I hate the waiting, but I trust my health experts.
Ron's e-mail address is: rinzoom AT gmail.com (replace "AT" with "@")
