Radiation treatment

Some of you know that a while back I was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. My PSA came back at 44.80 and 80% of the prostrate was a tumor. Well, I had the surgery and everything went fine. In and out of the hospital in under 36 hours. The side effects they warned me about never happened and I thought "This is great ! I'm cancer free !"

Not so fast.

After surgery, they want your PSA to come back at zero or as close as possible, but mine came back at 0.98, which is good, I mean that's a hell of a lot lower than 44.80....but not good enough. So, they send me back for another, more sensitive scan. Well, it spread to a couple of lymph nodes.
Not big spots, there's only 2 of them and they're just 2mm,[ smaller than a BB ] but now I have to start radiation treatment and hormone therapy.

It's targeted radiation, so there's no hair loss or anything like that, but they said there may be skin irritation, maybe even some blistering and fatigue, so I guess I'll have an excuse for naps.
The place I have to go is 40 miles from my house and I have to go 5 days a week for 8 weeks. that's 40 round trips of 80 miles.
That's 3200 miles.
The treatment only takes about 20 minutes, so it's takes me longer to get there than what I'm going there for.
I start treatment mid February and this will last till mid April.

This is going to seriously cut into my fishing time.

a reply to: DAVID64

My hopes and prayers are with you. Stay strong! Sounds like you've got a good grasp on it.
I went thru a similar situation, only it wasn't colon cancer. My (colon) surgery lasted 8 hours and I was in the hospital for 5 days after the surgery. So I feel you're pain. I too had to travel a long distance to get to the hospital that could treat me. Only I had a 3 and a half hour drive one way; 7 hours there and back. I had a few follow ups and it was rough driving all that way for a 20 minute appointment. So there are others who can empathize with your situation. I lost my best friend (my cousin) to colon cancer so I love to hear stories of people beating it. So, Thank you for sharing that.
You sound tough as nails, so I know you'll handle it like a trooper. It'll all be in your rear view soon. Fish on!

God Bless you! May you have a speedy recovery. Thanks for sharing such a personal thing your going through.

Make sure you get some good skin care products and use them. Do a search for ones that are recommended for radiation treatment.

My mom has done this two times now: once for breast and once for colon. She tolerated the colon cancer treatments just fine, but she seemed to be doing well for the breast treatments right up until the last two and then her skin broke down into blistering and it was very unpleasant.

So my advice is to start your skin care before and keep it up all the way, even if you think you don't need it, because your skin can seem fine right up until ... it's not. Every little bit helps and if the skin care staves off the big issues, well, you don't want blisters where those treatments are going to be. If you do get that problem? I hear sitz baths are very soothing.

Good luck and you are in my prayers.

My friend just went through the targeted radiation for breast cancer.
Small like yours, minimal treatment.

She is all clear now.

She didn't lose her hair or anything, she did well with it, just very tired after a treatment.

The treatment was a bit rough she said, as she had to lay on a steel bed, with the "target area" though the hole, and she said it burned some, while being treated.

She's glad she did it, and hopefully you will have the same results!
I'll keep you in my thoughts! Good luck!

a reply to: DAVID64

Hope you get 'er beat, bro.

We'll say a prayer for ya.

Lookin forward to more of your fish lies....erm..stories...

a reply to: DAVID64

My absolute sincerest prayers to you.

I got Lucky, removed the tumor at 28. The 1000 liter irrigation bag after wasn't fun, and the radiation treatments made me feel sick but not chemo sick.

They were worried about my smoking and the radiation treatments affecting my lungs.

You've been going through some tough patches lately. I wish you and yours much improved health

For me Gleason 9 Stage 4 So I know what you know. I had no lymph node involvement nor did I have any PSA over 0 Post op. I should have. At those stages I should not be here and it has been three years and still zero psa. But not without side effects. Mine are somewhat severe. But I am here.
For you re: Radiation. Yes I did have it. At first nothing. No side effects. Then afterwords say two to three weeks. I became tired. Very much so. Had to sleep in afternoons for a few weeks and then....I simply felt good.

I had people praying for me all over the world. [I will ask them to do the same for you as well]
No one knew my name but God knew. I had a good Dr. and I had a lot of people who didn't know me praying. I will do the same for you. It is good your side effects are few. There are nerve bundles near the prostrate that can be damaged or require removal sometimes.

I do believe that radiation played an enormous part in my recovery. You may not be able to fish for a short while. I had to park my bass boat for a season. But no one will stop me from missing this springs spawn season. No not even the green people. Yes my motor runs on gas. So does my car. My generator and my lawn mower. And because of good Drs and prayer I am still here, as you will also be. GodSpeed

a reply to: DAVID64

Twelve years ago I went through what you are going through. I had a prostatectomy but it had metastasized a little bit onto the abdominal wall, so they said they would have to use targeted radiation to take out those last little spots. They allowed about 3 months or so between the surgery and radiation because radiation reduces the ability of the healthy tissue to heal, so they wanted to make sure all the surgical wounds were fully healed before they started hitting me with radiation.

One thing they did for me which you didn't mention is that they gave me Lupron injections before the radiation treatment. I had my radiation treatment done at Stanford University Medical Center. Stanford was one of the pioneers of radiation treatment many years ago and still had (at that time) some of the original MDs on the staff who had pretty much seen everything there was to see with regard to radiation treatment. I happened to luck out and get treated by one of those guys.

When cancer cells metastasize, they basically migrate from whatever tissue they originate in and then set up shop somewhere else in your body. But they retain the character of the tissue they originated from--in this case, prostate cells. The principle behind radiation therapy is that cancer cells in general have a lower ability to withstand and recover from radiation than normal healthy cells--they're easier to kill. So, the idea is to hit the area around the cancer cells with a dose of radiation large enough to kill the cancer cells but just small enough to not kill the healthy cells. The metabolism of prostate cells is regulated by testosterone, and Lupron basically turns off your body's ability to produce testosterone temporarily and therefore makes the prostate cancer cells even more unable to tolerate radiation. Then, when they hit the cancer cells with the radiation, those cells are much easier to kill. The combination of Lupron with radiation is more effective than either Lupron or radiation individually. If you haven't done so already, and you want an extra margin of certainty about the cure, you might want to talk to your doctor about this.

In my case, it worked perfectly and the metastasized cancer cells were 100% knocked out. That was the good news. The bad news was that--like someone else in this thread--I experienced extreme fatigue, and general lack of energy, for a couple of years. Whether you take the Lupron or not, don't expect to get up and dance a jig for some time after the radiation.

Good luck.

a reply to: DAVID64

That sucks. Hope they get it fixed for good this time.