Help navigate next steps

Hello Depac 

A warm welcome to the Macmillan Online Prostate Community, although I am so sorry to find you here. I am Brian one of the Community Champions here on the Community - I also have Prostate cancer.

Don't forget none of us on the Community are medically trained and this is a peer to peer platform where we exchange views from personal experience.

So he's got a rising PSA, he's also 89 years old. Most treatments for Prostate Cancer can be very debilitating with fatigue being the main side effect - for me, if he was my dad, it would be a question of how will any treatment affect his quality of life?

Having said that, here's a link to our guide to Questions to ask your Medical Team. Please use this as a guide.

I do hope this helps, if you have any questions, please do come back to me.

Best wishes - Brian.

Hi Depac, if his psa was elevated in July, did they not give him the hormone injections straight away? It would normally be the first step.

As for further treatments, I can only report my husband's situation. He was initially diagnosed, 3.5 years ago, with a 1200 psa count and then put onto the injections. His psa dropped down to an almost acceptable level but his cancer had spread and so whilst not curable it is treatable. He will be 80 on Monday. He also has AF, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and more recently suffered a stroke. Oncology are reluctant to offer chemo as do not think he would be a suitable subject, so it may be the case with your dad.

However, there are other meds that they can offer which can help lower the testosterone which the cancer needs to feed off. Unfortunately, they did not work with my husband and so they have withdrawn them from his treatment, but they may well work in your dad's case. Ask what treatments will be suitable for him and also, what new ones are available as things change so rapidly.

Good luck for tomorrow.

Gina

Thank you