New Here but a Year On

Hi everyone

I am new to this particular forum today, and have been visiting the Prostate Cancer Forum and the One Step at a Time thread for some months now.

A year ago - 6 August 2025 - I had a call from my GP with the results of the blood test I had done the previous day.  You could tell it was going to be a difficult conversation just from the way he was speaking.... However I had somewhat jumped the gun and had a look at my NHS App and seen the results about 2 hours before he rang.  I didn't at that time realise the import of the numbers.   For my age range the scores on the doors of my PSA test should have been <4.5 ; mine was 953!  You could hear the alarm bells ringing.... I was completely asymptomatic.

Anyway - straight onto the 2WW pathway, scans and biopsies set up and then the news from my CNS that I did have Prostate Cancer and was "treatable but not curable".  I am a Gleason 9 with mets in lymph nodes in the pelvis and abdomen but bone scans were clear thankfully.

I am sure many of you know the head-spinning which takes place at this moment - and for several weeks/months afterward.  Fortunately I have a daughter who was most helpful and had pointed me in the direction of the Headspace app (their Coping with Cancer course is really quite good) and had sent me a "Snoozeband" so that I could nod off to sleep whilst listening to some very chilled out music (Radio 3 Unwind is a favourite).

Straight onto hormone therapy to stop testosterone from feeding the cancer cells and then onto chemotherapy (six sessions at three weekly intervals) which finished at the end of May.  So I am just in the getting over it phase, and especially getting over the tapering down of steroid treatment which has been difficult in terms of fatigue (the likely effects of the tapering was something that I was not made aware of, just the specific timing of it all).

I have found the support from the MacMillan fora absolutely wonderful - and only wish that I had found them earlier.

I did find it interesting that during chemo I was with a wide bunch of folk who were all at differing stages with different types of cancer, and had some great chats in the waiting room.  I did think that I was one of the lucky ones at times going into the ward as I only had the saline and Docetaxel drip bags - there were so many others with many many more bags on their drip stands, and they seemed to have been there for ages before I turned up and were still there when I left.  I did get to like the phrase "flush and go" though!

My next stage in the middle of August is to talk to my oncologist about radiotherapy, something which I am feeling quite positive about.

I felt that I wanted to join a wider group of folk to garner some other experience, so I hope to be able to join in and contribute to this group as and when I can.

Wishing every one on here all the very best

KrisPy