Well, that was a surprise at 3 p.m. on Good Friday afternoon.

A resident from the urology department called to let me know that she had reviewed my email with the original urologist and, after consulting with the nuclear medicine department, they came to the conclusion that I made a strong case for me getting an alternate scan.

Unfortunately, the VA doesn’t offer the Axumin scans, but they do offer Fludeoxyglucose F18 (FDG) PET scans which are also reliant on PSMA for the ligand to attach itself to.

She said that the F18 ligand interacts differently than the 68-gallium does, so it’s possible that it will attach to the PSMA molecules on the cancer cells. (In a prostate cancer forum, one patient was in a similar situation. The 68-gallium scans didn’t work for him, but a Pylarify PSMA PET scan did.)

I know from earlier reading that F18 FDG scans aren’t as sensitive and may not work best in a recurrent cancer situation, but they definitely won’t pick anything up if we don’t do them. She offered to put the order in to do one, and I said yes.

I’ll give nuclear medicine a few days next week to receive and process the order before calling them to schedule the scan.

I thanked the doctor at the end of the call and she, in turn, thanked me for advocating for myself.

I’ll post more when the date is scheduled, and I’ll be putting my list of questions together for the medical oncologist appointment on 14 April.

Be well!

A little reading: Is There Utility for FDG PET in Prostate Cancer?

Header image: Anza-Borrego Desert, California