Hi there, I am wondering if anyone has any experience like my husband.and has any advice.
he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, gleeson 8, he had radiotherapy and 2 1/2 years of prostat and also took cyproterone acetate as he had severe side effects (hot flushes in the extreme mainly).
his psa has gone down to 0.01 and has stopped hormone therapy for the last two months. Of course he was delighted to end the hormone treatment and he knows it can take time for testosterone to return but he is feeling very low, he has aches all over, is getting hot flushes and daily fatigue. The aches are the worst, at some points he is in sheer pain, especially in his hands, back and soles of his feet.
Has anyone else experienced similar? Is this part of the hormone blocker now stopping or should we be concerned about something else?
he tries to fight it, he regularly goes to the gym but there are days he simply is in pain and will fall asleep at his home office desk.- I have stocked up on evening promise, sage and various others whilst keeping him on a healthy (most of the time) diet.
thank you for reading
Has hubby been prescribed any pain killers? Was his cancer contained in the prostate?
He's doing the best thing going to the gym as often as he can it does help as I know to my benefit. I kept going right through my treatment and it helped no end. Minimal weight gain from the HT a small belly - which with targetted exercise went and it definitely helped with the fatigue and mood disturbance also giving you a place to go and socialise and maybe for a while not think of the Cancer, treatment and medical appointments. I found that I noticed all these side effects more after finishing Prostat than while on it. The Prostat will take a good while to leave his system so the hot flushes, fatigue and joint pain from that will lessen as time goes on but it could take up to 9 months or slightly longer to completely clear his system. I think my testosterone went back up in a similar time frame and by around a year or 18 months after finishing radiotherapy it had slowly come back up. Of course everyone is different.
Do you have a Maggies Centre at your cancer Centre or near you? They do a recovering from Prostate Cancer Treatment course which will include tips for getting through all these things from diet to exercise and relaxation and coping techniques. It was, when I did it about 5 years ago a six week course of I think 2 hours on Monday afternoons. Also if your Maggies have a "Walnut Club" for men with prostate cancer prior to treatment, going through treatment and post treatment it may be good for him to go there and meet other men in a similar situation and chat over symptoms and share tips. Our Maggies Centre held these meetings every Wednesday afternoons for an hour and the men usually met up for a chat and cuppa and biscuit or cake before hand then a talk with one of the Maggies Centre professionals and a guest speaker - usually from the hopspital such as radiologists, nurses, etc. they also welcomed the partners, carers, wives who had their own "moan and groan" group 
-Which was mainly a cuppa cake and natter group and once a month one of the Maggies professionals would hold a more formal meeting with them and find out how things were going with them and the men and if there was anything they could help with or give advice on. If you do have a Maggies near you and your hubby is not the kind of person who would go you can always go for a natter with one of their professionals any time just ring and ask. I am not sure if in this time post covid you can just walk in these days so always best to ring and check about that.
Hopefully, someone else will be along soon to answer your question about the acute pain he seems to be going through at the moment as I never had it. The pain itself will be causing more fatigue and loss of sleep -which makes everything worse and becomes a cycle of pain and fatigue. I would say he needs to contact his GP's surgery for better pain management and if that doesn't help to contact his consultant's secretary to ask for help from there or ask his cancer nurse or key worker at the hospital (if he was allocated one) for anything that may help with this
Going through the diagnosis and treatment and then being sort of "dropped" back into "normal" life at the end of it when you feel nothing like "normal" can be quite hard to cope with and can bring along it's own problems too.
If you don't have a Maggie's Centre near you there may be other cancer charities near you that offer similar help too.
All the best.
