A Night to Remember
It was a Saturday evening in February, and our son took his nine-year-old daughter and his girlfriend up to Renton, WA, for three or four hours. We were chilling watching tv. The following Friday afternoon, my birthday, I was to have a phone consult with my urologist to discuss my previous biopsy report for two suspected prostate lesions found on an MRI...and that after two PSA counts of 16.2 and 18.2. I noted I had a lab report just in...on a Saturday evening! I had my suspicion and debated whether to go to the site's test and lab results. Sure enough--cancer. What a gut punch that someone had released it like this.
Never a good time to find out about cancer
My wife was immediately in a bad place. Then I got to thinking, there really is no good time to find out about cancer. But our Father in heaven is so good, and I felt it a blessing to find out when we did. Our son just decided to leave with everyone else for the evening, I did not find out the next Friday and my birthday, which assuredly woulda ruined a great next weekend we had planned by ourselves, and we got to deal with the grief.
So far...
The cancer has not spread, but a second opinion revealed extra details. My prostate is four times larger than normal (I had two bouts of prostatitis in July '13 and April '14), nerve-sparing was not feasible, and the bladder neck presented possible issues; in other words, surgery would be complicated. Brachytherapy was also a possibility, but that was scary enough, and my oncologist shied away from that for the same reasons.
Choice of treatment
So, it boiled down to hormone therapy and eight weeks of daily radiation. I had my lupron 3.5 weeks ago. I am now awaiting Kaiser to lift their moratorium on elective stuff as my urologist relayed the need for marker placement, along with a gel spacer. The elective stuff has to do with general anesthesia, which is the only route he has performed this. Fortunately, we have time to see how it comes about, with a target procedure date of mid-June and radiation by month's end.
Side effects
The lupron should last five months. The worst part was the day after. I went for my morning walk, and not long after, the injection site on my duff was killing me. I felt constricted, anxious, on edge, and just out of sorts...not a good day. Even snapped at a poor lady when trying to get our car looked at. Later in the evening, the ol' pulse took to racing for about ten minutes. The night proved better, and the next day was normal. A call to the injection people confirmed side effects were possible the day after. As of now, I have had a few possible hot flashes and a couple more bouts of the racing pulse.
In this together
The worst thing about all of this was having to watch my beloved wife struggle with this. I have learned patience and taking the high road of being the strong one, encouraging her that we would get through this together and enjoy many years together with her impending retirement. I might own this diagnosis, but she is right there every step of the way, through thick and thin.
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