The journey continues learned

Hello Big Col 

I am so sorry to read that. I had a "suspect area" on my pelvis and my oncologist had them "zapped" at my Radiotherapy treatment. My PSA is still a low(ish) 0.29 so lets hope it worked.

Your oncologist sounds happy with your treatment so stick with us - you are doing great.

Best wishes - Brian.

Good morning Big Col ,

I am not in the same position as you with regard to recurrence, but my initial treatment includes radiotherapy and Zoladex which is a LHRH Analogue. I've been on that for 6 months.

My initial side effects have been:

• Low libido - fallen off a cliff.
• Erectile Dysfunction - who cares, given the above (my wife doesn't care either, she has her own medical problems).
• Hot sweats. Bad ones are quite infrequent, but what I think of as a "hot rush" are regular. I take them as signs that the therapy is active and smile when I get one. I'm a bit weird.
• Beyond that, some fatigue, occasional bouts of brain fog which appear linked to the fatigue or stress, both very mild and limited.

I am taking calcium and vitamin D3 tablets to counter the bone effects. I was going to the gym three times a week prior to radiotherapy, but given the chunk travelling has taken out of my day have not been going. The other preventative was walking, but something called piriformis syndrome had thrown that out in the short term. That is quite literally a pain in the bum.

Looking at everything your oncologist has said, you are in a good place. With the advancements in therapies continuing to gather pace, it seems to me that most f us are going to be in a better place over time.

 Big Col , I have been on Zoladex for over 7 years and like mstev2 had RT at the start.  To be honest I can’t remember what it was like before having HT but as I am approaching 76, more issues seem to be age related rather that HT I think.  I did have 4 months recently on Enzalutamide which nearly wiped me out but others on here have tolerated it well.  We are all different.  Good luck, David

David2017  - just mentioning this here because I saw that you were on Enzalutamide but had to come off it because you were knocked clean out.

The other day, when looking for something else, I found this artice:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558767322001264
some of which I understood.

If I am reading it right, it suggests that half the current recommended dose of Enzalutamide was almost as effective as the full dose.

In the event that Enzalutmide was doing it's job on the cancer, I thought that you might like to know.

Then I lost the article.

Now, after searching different wording, I've found it again.

I don't know whether it is any help, or whether it will give you more information to discuss with the medics, but I thought I should at least tell you.

Steve

Thats my hope  to thanks  

I think I will drink milk...apparently its good for bowel cancer to.

That's also good, but it's about 600 mls of whole milk daily.

I'd rather it was beer....

But then it's about 1000 mg extra.

So, two beers.

Steve (mstev2 ), that’s really kind of you, thanks.  I found the Enzalutamide really knocked me for six.  Extreme fatigue and brain fog, I did drop to half dose for the last month but it didn’t really improve the situation.  Discussed options with my oncologist and managed to get her to consider SABR as an alternative. With this option I stopped the Enzalutamide on 31st December and already feel back to normal.  This is either a genius move, if the treatment works and gives me more time, or not so great if they hit my heart or lungs.  I had my planning yesterday (CT and MRI) ready for treatment of massive dose of RT mid February.  I don’t want to put anyone off having Enzalutamide as it has pulled my PSA right down and I know others have managed well on it.  If I need to go back on it, I would only go half strength from the start and that might make a big difference.   David

Why not