Day 2,093 – The Results

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects, Prostate Cancer, Recurrence

PSA Trend 20160803The results are in: 0.05 ng/ml.

I simultaneously breathed a humongous sigh of relief and got pissed off. “Will you make up your freakin’ mind already!?!?” Yes, I’m elated that my PSA actually came down from 0.08 to 0.05, but I’m pissed that this raises more questions than it will answer, and that I’m going to have to keep riding this wild roller coaster for the foreseeable future.

This round was particularly tough, emotionally. I usually never get worked up in advance of the blood draw but, before heading off to the clinic Monday morning, I was so nervous that I ate one spoonful of yogurt and decided that, if I continued, I’d be seeing that yogurt again going in the opposite direction.

When I finally saw that the results had been uploaded to my provider’s website tonight, my hand on the mouse was shaking and I truly didn’t want to click on the link to get the news. Not good. (By the way, I learned that my provider only uploads the data once a day, around midnight Eastern Time. That sucks.)

It will be interesting to see what the urologist has to say on 23 August. I’m sure part of it will be, “Let’s retest in December.” Yippee. I’m still quite concerned that I have a detectable PSA (albeit a low value) where I didn’t have before. What’s up with that?

Well, I’m spent. It’s time to call it a night. Thanks to everyone for your kind words, thoughts, and prayers.

13 thoughts on “Day 2,093 – The Results”

    1. Thanks, Phil. I agree. Although I’m still perplexed as to what’s really happening here. I think only time and more PSA tests will tell.

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    1. Thanks, Jim. It is confounding, that’s for sure. I’m not sure that we’ll get a definitive answer when I see the doctor in a couple of weeks. The only definitive thing that will happen is more PSA testing, of that, I can be sure.

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      1. I wish they still had the older samples of your draws and ran it thru this new test. I’m not convinced you have a problem at all, the values are so low. Something to really press the doctor on. What is the lowest PSA this test reliably reads? If he doesn’t know I wouldn’t worry until it hits 0.5. Just my two cents.

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      2. I’m beginning to agree with you, Jim. Even the doctor was unwilling to act beyond further PSA monitoring because the levels are still way below the 0.2 ng/ml biochemical recurrence threshold for us to think about doing any sort of salvage therapy. And I’m more than okay with that (even though I was an emotional wreck with all of this). I’m going to be very cautious and very deliberate in deciding what’s next for me if and when we get to that decision point.

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      3. I think that’s very wise. I’m an electrical engineer and your data points look a lot like random noise. It so sad that this is so hard on you. But it actually may turn out to be nothing. Don’t give up hope.

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  3. That’s good news. I see that you have only got these higher readings since the lab switched to ultrasensitive PSA tests. A coincidence or what? Wonder what other factors might be in play.

    A friend was getting higher than ideal PSA readings and going through the usual tests with nothing showing up. Then a junior doctor happened to ask whether he did much cycling. Well he does triathalons (although looking at him I find that difficult to believe – I need photographic evidence) so the answer was yes. The doc said stop cycling for a month (or it may have been three – I don’t remember -chemo-brain) and get your PSA retested which he did and the PSA reading was now at an acceptable level.

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    1. Thanks, Tim. I’m beginning to agree that it may be something with the change in testing to the ultratsensitive test that’s behind this. Still, the old test with a sensitivity to 0.03 ng/ml should have picked up the last four results (0.05, 0.04, 0.08, and 0.05).

      Your point about cycling is a good one, but not applicable in my case. However, a year ago, I made the mistake of being sexually active the day before the blood draw, so I attributed the cause to the elevated PSA in September to that. But in December and April, I made sure I didn’t have an orgasm for at least a week before the test, and this time around, two weeks.

      I’m going to be really interested in hearing what the urologist has to say on 23 August.

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