Hi
I only just noticed this group and hope I qualify as I’m trying understand others experiences.
My brief history.
November 24, supposed Acid Reflux, confirmed as Prostate Cancer which had spread to Lymph nodes. A week or so later a MRI scan reveals the Cancer has spread to the spine and an operation is carried out to remove part of the spine and replace it with metalwork.
December 24, after being sent home the surgery develops a haematoma (a bleed) and I return to hospital, after 10 days they decide that it’s looking good and will probably be absorbed by the body and I get sent home just before Christmas.
Three days later I have a temperature of nearly 40, after painkillers. Back to A&E and am kept in hospital for another 10 days. They were unsure what the issue was, as I had just had a bad reaction to Degarelix but after much giving of blood it is decided that the haematoma had got infected. They now suck fluid out of my back (looks like dirty river water) and start me on two lots of major antibiotics for 90 days.
January 25 visit Oncology and they are very concerned that the course of antibiotics has put me outside the window for conventional Cancer follow up treatment but agree that they are necessary. They start me on Apalutamide, 4 tablets everyday (in one go) and comes with tons of warnings.
February 25 no immediate side effects from Apalutamide but after a couple of weeks everything seems to be going backwards. I’m aching all over, even the tip of my little finger. The surgical area is sore and I am feeling tired all the time.
THE GOOD NEWS - 8th March 25 - visit to Oncology. I tell the consultant about all my aches and pains. He smiles at me and shows me a graph of my PSA readings and says that back in November when my journey started it was 4900, he personally hadn’t seen anything so high and now it is 0.32! He told me the Cancer has totally gone asleep! I asked him about the Radiotherapy they were going to use as a clean up operation. No need he says.
The consultant thinks that Apalutamide might be the cause for a lot of my aches and pains and says I can now reduce this to three a day. So if the cancer does wake up we now have another tablet in hand and of course they then can then use tools like chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
I know the cancer cannot be cured and my journey is relatively short compared to others but it is really motivational to be given good news for a change.
So my question here is anyone has suffered similar when does the surgery feel better, will it ever be normal? Nearly 5 months on and I’m still on full painkillers and have pain all over the body.
Cheers
Chappy123
