Blindsided.

That’s how I was this morning (I’m writing this on 5 September) when I hopped online to check on my PSA results.

Ever since my surgery in January 2011, my post-surgery PSAs always came back as <0.03 ng/mL; this time, it came back at 0.05 ng/mL. Shocked, stunned, heart-wrenched, panicked.  Yep, that was me, and then some.

Because my appointment with my urologist isn’t until 15 September, I immediately began searching for information online about increasing PSA levels after prostatectomies to learn what this meant.  Of course, I know the big picture: If PSAs go too high, “It’s baaack!” But what about from <0.03 to 0.05?? Is that significant?  If so, how so?

The Prostate Cancer Foundation and Johns Hopkins came to my rescue and calmed some of my frayed nerves.  I’m breathing again.

In the PCF article, “The Role of PSA,” they reminded me:

After prostatectomy, the PSA drops to “undetectable levels,” typically given as < 0.05 or < 0.1, depending on the lab. This is effectively 0, but by definition we can never be certain that there isn’t something there that we’re just not picking up.

It’s good to know that 0.05 ng/mL was still considered to be undetectable, and that recurrence was defined:

In the post-prostatectomy setting, the most widely accepted definition of a recurrence is a PSA > 0.2 ng/mL that is seen to be rising on at least two separate occasions at least two weeks apart and measured by the same lab.

There’s no need for me to be in full panic mode at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not concerned.  The most disconcerting thing for me is that there was movement in the PSA reading and that this may be the beginning of an upward trend.  Or it may simply be a blip in the readings. I’m doing my best to not let emotions overtake facts.

Johns Hopkins has a great article about the topic that also helped me calm down after reading it:

On a technical level, in the laboratory, Chan trusts the sensitivity of assays down to 0. 1, or slightly less than that. “You cannot reliably detect such a small amount as 0.01,” he explains. “From day to day, the results could vary — it could be 0.03, or maybe even 0.05” — and these “analytical” variations may not mean a thing. “It’s important that we don’t assume anything or take action on a very low level of PSA. In routine practice, because of these analytical variations from day to day, if it’s less than 0. 1, we assume it’s the same as nondetectable, or zero.”

I’m really anxious to talk with my urologist about the plan going forward, and waiting the ten days between now and then will be difficult.

I would hope–and push–for another PSA test in a month or so and then, depending on its results, stepped up frequency of testing if it’s at 0.05 ng/mL or higher.  That, of course, will open the door to the wonderful world of PSA Anxiety: Test, wait, worry; test, wait, worry; test, wait, worry.

I remember how anxious I was going in for my first PSA test after the surgery and, over the last 4 years and 8 months, that anxiety dwindled.  For this week’s test, it was just a matter of routine.  I was excited to be able to call myself “cancer-free” just shy of the five year mark. Now this happened, calling that five year milestone into question (at least in my mind; perhaps not in that of my urologist).  Silly me.

I was hoping that the cancer cloud hanging over my head at this point was withering away to a thin, wispy little cirrus cloud.  Instead, this morning, I got this:

Once cancer is introduced into your vocabulary, it’s there for good.  Period.