Healing
Well, here I am, still alive and feeling very well much to the surprise of the medical team looking after me.
May 2009. Radical prostectomy which revealed, in pathology after the op, that I had a Gleason 4 + 5 grade cancer which had escaped into my body.
A bone scan showed "hot spots" on the left illiac crest (pelvis bone) (about 4cm long) and something on lumbar spine 4 and 5. An MRI scan was inconclusive about what is on the pelvic crest. Doesn't look like a normal metastasis. Unable to do a needle puncture biopsy because the material is hard and so far an operation to remove some of the material hasn't been offered. Spots on the lumbar spine have been identified as arthritis.
Nonethelss. because of the high Gleason score, a psa of 30 prior to the operation (the hospital missed the cancer in the first biopsy, then advised "wait and watch" while the psa climbed to 12.6, did another biopsy and only found a Gleason 3 + 3 so their advice was, yet again, "wait and see." I thought otherwise, had a second opinion, had the prostate reomved by a surgeon using the da Vinci robot/computer technology.
When the bone scan revealed the hot spot on the pelvis the advice was "don't make any long term plans and don't put off doing anything you want to do." When I pressed the surgeon to tell me what sort of time scale he was talking about, he said 1 1/2 to 2 years. A bombshell.
So immediately I began hormone (Leporin) shots, one every 3 months, from June 2009 until February 2010. PSA fell dramatically after the first shot, within a week it was 12.6. The next week it was down again by half, to 6, and this rapid reduction continued until by May 2010 it was 0.1
May 2009. Radical prostectomy which revealed, in pathology after the op, that I had a Gleason 4 + 5 grade cancer which had escaped into my body.
A bone scan showed "hot spots" on the left illiac crest (pelvis bone) (about 4cm long) and something on lumbar spine 4 and 5. An MRI scan was inconclusive about what is on the pelvic crest. Doesn't look like a normal metastasis. Unable to do a needle puncture biopsy because the material is hard and so far an operation to remove some of the material hasn't been offered. Spots on the lumbar spine have been identified as arthritis.
Nonethelss. because of the high Gleason score, a psa of 30 prior to the operation (the hospital missed the cancer in the first biopsy, then advised "wait and watch" while the psa climbed to 12.6, did another biopsy and only found a Gleason 3 + 3 so their advice was, yet again, "wait and see." I thought otherwise, had a second opinion, had the prostate reomved by a surgeon using the da Vinci robot/computer technology.
When the bone scan revealed the hot spot on the pelvis the advice was "don't make any long term plans and don't put off doing anything you want to do." When I pressed the surgeon to tell me what sort of time scale he was talking about, he said 1 1/2 to 2 years. A bombshell.
So immediately I began hormone (Leporin) shots, one every 3 months, from June 2009 until February 2010. PSA fell dramatically after the first shot, within a week it was 12.6. The next week it was down again by half, to 6, and this rapid reduction continued until by May 2010 it was 0.1