Seidman Cancer Center, Continued

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

My lab results appeared on the University Hospitals portal on Sunday evening. A weird time. I'd been checking continually since last Thursday (I'd had the lab work on Wednesday), but nothing was showing up, so I don't know why I checked on Sunday evening. But I did, moments before I turned off the light for beddie-bye (a time, which at my age, is ... 8:30 p.m.), and I saw the results were in. I told Joyce, lying beside me.

"Why don't you wait till tomorrow?" she asked.

"I'll worry all night," I said. And so I looked. And worried all night anyway.

Only two test results were there: a comprehensive metabolic panel (everything pretty normal) and the bone scan, whose description was beyond my "knowledge" of medical science. So I'll wait till tomorrow to hear my oncologist explain it all to me.

Monday morning--the testosterone test was back (level very low--which is exactly where we want it: prostate cancer loves testosterone, so for the past six years I have been on drugs that kill testosterone--Lupron and Trelstar). And the PSA result was also back. It has been falling since my radiation therapy last fall (my second round of that). The chart below shows what's been happening.

6 August 2018	20.13
12 September 2018	11.98
16 October 2018	3.36
9 November 2018	1.93
15 January 2019	1.07
18 April 2019	0.33
10 July 2019	0.29

So ... that's good news. Although I've not had a prostate gland since my surgery in June 2005, prostate cancer cells also emit the Prostate Specific Antigen, so the declining numbers are a good (though temporary) thing.

Tomorrow morning, we go back up to Seidman, as I said, for a consultation with my oncologist--and for a couple of injections (Trelstar [see above] and Xgeva [for bone strength: Trelstar weakens bones])--one in my quadriceps, another in my ... you know ...

So I'll post more when I know more ...


July 18, 2019; 8:30 a.m.

Joyce and I arrived up at Seidman a bit before my “official” arrival time of 10:20. Then there was the usual waiting, the worrying, the walking back with the nurse for the check of my vitals, for the-customary questioning (“Have you fallen lately?”).

And then more waiting for my oncologist to arrive. From our room we could hear him dealing with other patients in two different rooms before he finally entered ours.

Then, at last, he arrived. Amiable greetings. Then ... down to it. He said my vitals looked good—as did my bloodwork from the previous week. He was especially pleased by my 0.29 PSA. Joyce asked him why he thinks it’s gone so low, and he said he couldn’t be certain, but it could be because of the immunotherapy I underwent back in January and February 2018. That gave me a surge of hope.

He did have a concern about my bone scan, however. A spot on one of my lumbar vertebrae. He said that he couldn’t compare it with my previous bone scan because, well, that scan hadn’t been very clear. (Can’t compare two things when you can't see one of them!)

So … that means I’ll be heading back for another scan on September 24. (O, joy unbounded!) Then he’ll be able to detect more accurately what is going on—if anything really is.

My Seidman visit ended with my quarterly Trelstar injection (appropriately occurring at the, uh, end of the visit). A bit of an ouch.

And in two weeks I’ll head up there again to recommence my 6-week injections of Xgeva, a drug that promotes bone strength (Trelstar weakens bones). I’d suspended Xgeva for some months because I’d had a dental implant—a process that takes (as some of you surely know) forever.

Rain was in the forecast yesterday, so I’d brought along an umbrella, and as we were about to head out of the building, Noah’s Torrent commenced. I told Joyce to wait; I’d go get the car. And so off I went (waded?), questioning my wisdom with every splashy step.

When I got to the car, I closed the umbrella, tossed it in the back seat, got in the front, and in that short amount of time—less than a minute—I was soaked. It’s possible I said a few bad words.

I was about fifty yards from Seidman, and by the time I got there, the rain had stopped, and Joyce, dry and smiling, walked to the car. Where her kinds words comforted me, all the way home.