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Seidman Cancer Center
Beachwood, Ohio

Yesterday was my quarterly visit with my oncologist up at Seidman. Readers here know that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer late in 2004, had a prostatectomy (removal of the gland) in June 2005. When the cancer returned, I had a month of radiation treatments at Cleveland Clinic in January 2009. And when the cancer returned a few years ago--moving into my bones--I commenced hormone therapy, which slows but does not cure. I am now on two testosterone-suppressants (prostate cancer loves testosterone!): Lupron (quarterly injection) and Casodex (daily pill)--and I also get a monthly shot of Xgeva  for bone strength.

Yesterday, after talking with my oncologist I got a nice dessert: both injections: one in left triceps, one in left butt cheek! Ouch and Ouch!

I'll also be returning in about a month for a CAT scan and bone scan--to see the dimensions of the metastasis. ("And we'll have fun, fun, fun, till my daddy takes the T-bird away!" Thank you, Beach Boys!) (Link to song!)

But there was news a little darker--with perhaps some faint glimmer of light about it. My doctor thinks it's time to add another treatment. My PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen), stable for a few months, is moving upward again (indicating the cancer's increased activity), so I will soon undergo a process called "Sipuleucel-T" or "Provenge." It's immunotherapy.

What will happen in this: Three times (separated by a week's rest) I will go to the Red Cross in Akron and have the T-cells* in my blood withdrawn and then sent to Atlanta for renovation (they will be "programmed" to resist the specific cancer I have); a few days later, I will go to the main campus of University Hospitals (University Circle in Cleveland) and have them reintroduced through another infusion.

This will be a Tuesday-Friday cycle: Tuesday (Akron Red Cross), Friday (UH). Three times, each time with a week's rest intervening. Five weeks in all. (Here's a link that explains it more clearly than I just did!)

The literature on Provenge suggests I may live a bit longer because of these treatments (link to a site). Though let's not get too excited: It seems the average is only about four months longer. But my oncologist is hopeful, and you'd better believe I am! (Hopeful? Wishful? Is there a difference?)

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the health I do have, loving the time I do have. Family. Family. Family.

And Joyce--who was beside me every second yesterday, holding my hand, embodying my hope--how can I even imagine losing her ...

As the Bard says in one of my favorite sonnets, #64 (entire text below**):

This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.


*T-cell = a lymphocyte of a type produced or processed by the thymus gland and actively participating in the immune response.

**Sonnet 64

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.