Tag: Emotions

Three Weeks

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects5 Comments

It was an emotionally draining day at work today.

We provide support to patients and their families at a local hospital, and a case worker came to our office looking for activities for a patient in his early twenties and his parents to do over the weekend. Normally, that’s a common request. However, the case worker explained that the patient had only a few weeks left on this planet, and the doctor was urging him and his parents to get out of the hospital and do something—anything—with their remaining time together.

I was crushed.

I’m pretty good about compartmentalizing patient stories and not letting them affect me too much. Not this time. It hit too close to home, at least conceptually. Of course, the young age of the patient added to my reaction as well.

If your doctor told you to go out and make the most of your last three weeks on Earth, what would you do?

Talk about a reality check on your own mortality.

Month 86 – Struggling

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects, Prostate Cancer, Recurrence, Side Effects6 Comments

First things, first. I’m struggling to thaw out after spending five days in frigid (-4° F / -20° C) Chicago with my sister and her family this past weekend. You may well be asking, “Who in their right mind flies from San Diego to Chicago in January?!?” Sadly, that would be me.

I contemplated returning for Christmas but had sticker shock on the cost of the airfare, so I opted to return for my birthday last week at a quarter of the cost. This birthday was one of those annoying milestone birthdays—the 30th anniversary of my 30th birthday—and that definitely warranted an appropriate celebration. Of course, anyone in our situation knows that any birthday you’re around to celebrate is a good birthday.

But what I’m really struggling with is this whole notion of recurrence and what to do about it.

I’d like to think that throughout my life I’ve been a generally optimistic, my glass is half full kind of guy, but one with a healthy dose of reality attached to that optimism. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and recognize the inevitable. I understand the value of a positive attitude, however, I’m increasingly finding that I have a diminishing tolerance of false optimism. “You got this. You’re going to kick cancer’s ass!” Really? Are you sure about that? How do you know? And at what cost? The $109,989.11 invested in my prostatectomy (the real number, mostly paid by the insurance company) doesn’t seem to be paying off.

The costs that I’m talking about aren’t just financial, either. There are emotional and physical costs as well.

With salvage radiation therapy (SRT)—the only option that still has a curative potential—there’s the risk of increased incontinence, loss of sexual function, bowel control issues, and fatigue during the treatments. Chatting with other patients in online forums or through their own blogs, some of these issues don’t manifest themselves until well after the SRT treatments end. And all of this for a 30%-55% chance of having no evidence of disease five or six years after SRT ends.

With androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) (hormone therapy), there’s the loss of libido and sexual function, mood swings impacting relationships, hot flashes, loss of muscle mass, increased risk of osteoporosis, and significant depression. Of course, ADT is not curative, so you get to suffer through those substantial side effects for a longer period because ADT prolongs your life.

It’s easy to get excited when you see your PSA plummet after starting ADT, as it impacts those androgen-dependent cancer cells. But guess what? There are also androgen-independent cells floating around that the ADT won’t impact at all, and it’s those cells that will start driving the PSA back up again and that will ultimately kick your ass.

Being a data-driven numbers guy, I’m also struggling with how to quantify these potential impacts on quality of life.

When you’re in an online or even in-person support group, you have to remember that there’s a self-selection bias taking place that will skew your perspective to the bad. Think about it. Almost everyone who’s in the group is there because they’re at some stage of dealing with this disease and having issues that need answers. Who you don’t see are those patients who are outside of the group who have success stories in dealing with their cancer and have simply stepped away from that chapter of their life.

For me, I want to know the ratio of who’s in the group versus those who are outside the group. Is it like an iceberg with 10% of the patients in the group being the visible ones and 90% of the success stories out of sight? Is it 50-50? 30-70? 60-40? Knowing the answer to that helps me understand the risks better.

I’ve stumbled across a few studies that talk about the likelihood of potential side effects from SRT but I would like to see more. The risks do seem to be relatively low from what I recall and from what my doctor is telling me, but forgive me if I’m skittish about accepting even low risk given where I’m at. (My surgeon forewarned me that there was a 20% chance the cancer would return; I guess I’m just not feeling all that lucky at the moment given my track record.)

Similarly, with ADT, it seems that most everyone suffers some form of side effects, but each person is impacted differently. Again, the numbers guy in me would love to see some sort of study that says, “While on ADT, my quality of life has been reduced by __% in each of the following areas…” I’ve heard patients say that they are “just a shell of the person I was once” or that the ADT has them remaining in bed 20 hours a day. Of course, there are others who seem to have only mild side effects with negligible impact on their daily lives. What’s the distribution like between those two extremes? Knowing the answer to that would be very helpful in decision making.

Given all that, I’m struggling with one more thing, and it may scare or even offend some readers.

“You’ve got plenty to live for. You need to fight. You need to be strong. You need to be a warrior and defeat this disease,”—all things that I’ve heard along the way. There’s this pervasive attitude that other patients, family members, and the healthcare system have that we must do everything we can to go on living for as long as we can at all costs.

Why?

Please don’t panic and think that I’m ready to check out tomorrow. I’m not. There is plenty to live for, and that is precisely why I ask the question.

Is being a shell of yourself and staying in bed 20 hours a day really living, or is it merely existing? Would you rather live a more full, active life for 8-10 years, or merely exist for 20 years?

What about the impact on your significant other and those closest to you? Yes, they’ll be by your side every step of the way. Do you think they would rather remember your last years as being present and engaged for 8-10 years, or withdrawn, moody, depressed, and barely capable of functioning for 20 years?

What about the financial impact on your family? Would you rather take a few bucket list trips with your significant other and family in your remaining 8-10 years, or would you rather take out a second mortgage on your home to pay for the drugs and latest technology tests that will keep you existing for 20 years, placing a financial burden on those who survive you?

Before you send me all sorts of hate mail, I know those are extreme examples and that there are many shades of gray between the extremes, but, in the absence of studies or data that mitigate those examples, that’s what’s rattling around inside my analytical, pragmatic mind at the moment—right or wrong. It’s just the way I’m wired. The good news is that I have time to find those studies and data that hopefully will give me the information I feel I need to make decisions going forward.

It takes strength to go through the radiation, ADT, and chemotherapy if that’s the path that you choose. It also, however, takes strength to say, “No. I’d rather live without those debilitating side effects for as long as I can, even if it means it will be for a shorter period of time.”

Thirteen years ago, my mother was diagnosed with mesothelioma, the incurable cancer associated with asbestos exposure. She was given the option to participate in some clinical trials that may have extended her life three to twelve months, but she refused. “I don’t want to be someone’s pin cushion when the end result will be the same.” She wanted to retain control over her life for as long as she could, and she did so to the best of her ability. Sadly, though, it was only a matter of months before she died, but she went out on her own terms.

That’s how you kick cancer’s ass.

I would like to think that I’ll be able to do the same.

Just a note. Because I knew I would be traveling, I wrote this post over a week ago. While I was in Chicago, a fellow prostate cancer patient, Mark Bradford, replied to a question in an online support group, and it’s complementary to the topic of this post. The question posed was, “At what point do you get tired of fighting?” He replied:

I dislike framing this as a fight. You have a disease, and you seek treatment for [it] till you decide to stop. Being in treatment is not fighting and stopping treatment is not giving up. I was inoperable from the beginning and stage 4 soon after. My outcome was certain, so my priority was quality of life over quantity. I did HT [hormone therapy] until it stopped working, and cannabis oil throughout. I refused chemo as it would not cure me or significantly extend my life. Don’t let anyone say you’re giving up if you decide it’s time to stop treatment. I could not afford alternatives, so my choices were limited. If you have the means, do whatever seems right to you. But accepting reality is not giving up.

I don’t think that I could agree more with Mark’s comment about framing this as a fight and about being in treatment or stopping treatment.

Mark is nearing the end of his life, and you can read his very poignant blog, God’s 2 by 4: Mark Bradford’s Cancer Journal.

Another patient, Dan Cole, answered simply and succinctly: “Live the life you choose to live. That is winning the fight.”

I know I’m getting way ahead of where I should be given my current status but, if nothing else, this disease certainly causes you to prematurely contemplate your own mortality.

Day 2,596 – Doctor Visit

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer, Recurrence8 Comments

I met with my doctor this afternoon to review my increasing PSA results, and it went just about as expected. There’s increasing concern, but things are progressing slowly enough that we can continue on the four month test cycle for now. That means I’ll be doing this all over again in April.

There were a few reality check moments in the conversation, though. I’ll get to those in a moment.

One thing I need to learn to do is shut up—at least for the first part of the meeting with the doctor. I’m not very good at letting the doctor talk and offer up his thoughts and recommendations and then ask the questions that I have. I just launch into a barrage of questions based on the research that I’ve done and assault the poor guy. On a positive note, he really didn’t dispute anything that I told him nor did he tell me that I was completely out to lunch on certain issues.

We reviewed the success rate for SRT, with various studies showing it to be 35%-55% effective at being progression-free at 5 or 6 years. (Here’s one.) We also discussed the potential side effects of SRT, and he did seem to believe that the risks were lower than I thought they may be.

The conundrum of starting SRT early versus knowing where to radiate based on imaging came up as well. My sense was that he’d prefer to start SRT while the PSA is less that 0.2 ng/ml, and certainly before it reaches 0.5 ng/ml, assuming that the cancer remained in the prostate bed. Doing so, he said, offers the best chance for success. He suggested that, if we wait until it would be detectable on even the most sensitive imaging (which can’t detect anything reliably until the PSA hits the 1.5-2.0 range), that radiation would do little if any good at that point, as the cancer will likely have spread. Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) would be the treatment option of choice at that point, and ADT is not curative. It only prolongs life (with substantial side effects impacting quality of life).

The reality check moment for me came with his comment about waiting too long to the point where SRT wouldn’t be effective, and that ADT would be my primary treatment option. That really was an, “Oh, shit,” moment for me. It’s very easy to sit here and speculate how I will act in hypotheticals, but at some point in the future, I am going to have to make real world decisions that affect my longevity and quality of life.

Based on my slow PSA doubling time (around 16 months), if my PSA progresses at its current rate, I’ll have 12 to 28 months to think about this and make my decision, based on whether I want to act if my PSA is around 0.15 or let it go all the way to 0.20. (See my “decision zone” in yellow below—yes, I had to geek out in my spreadsheet once again.) If I want to wait until it’s all the way to 0.5, I’ll have even more time.

Of course, one option is to do nothing. A study in 1999 showed that it took, on average, 8 years after PSA levels began to rise to reach metastasis, and another 5 years after metastasis to death.

The bottom line is that this is becoming increasingly real and that there will be some tough decisions in the next year or two. Of course, those decisions are mine and mine alone, and will be based on a variety of factors, not least of which will be my risk tolerance and any treatment’s impact to quality of life.

On that happy note, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy 2018! 🙂

Thanks, too, to those who took time to answer my questions in my salvage radiation therapy survey a few weeks ago. Your insights were quite helpful to me.

Month 82 – Reviewing PSA Results with Doctor

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer, Recurrence16 Comments

At this afternoon’s visit to the doctor to review my August PSA results, he asked, “How are you doing?” I replied, “I’m hoping you’re going to tell me.” “With a PSA of 0.09, you’re doing fine.”

I have to admit that I wasn’t quite psychologically prepared for that answer. Nor was I really prepared for the conversation that followed. But before getting into that, the bottom line was just as I expected: Continue to monitor PSA on a four-month cycle, which has me back in the lab in early December.

This was a new doctor that I hadn’t seen before and he was definitely more seasoned than the last one that I had. Still, all those years of experience could have taught him some better communication skills. He talked in broad generalities and in circles—even in response to my direct questions—and that was more than frustrating.

On the topic of recurrence, he didn’t think that I should be so quick to assume that an increasing PSA is indicative of recurrent cancer. He offered up the possibility that it could have been some benign prostate tissue left behind after the surgery and has grown enough where it’s detectable on the PSA test. Or, it could be cancer.

On the topic of PSA tests in general, he reminded me that the really old threshold for biochemical recurrence was 0.4 ng/ml before it was lowered to 0.2 ng/ml. It seemed that he valued the ultra-sensitive PSA test only as it related to the post-surgery pathology. If the pathology was bad, he seemed to put more stock in the ultra-sensitive PSA; but if the pathology was good, he seemed less inclined to put stock in it.

In other words, if you had a 4+3 Gleason score, positive margins, seminal vesicle involvement, or lymph node involvement—or some combination thereof—he would be more likely to consider acting on a 0.09 ng/ml PSA. But it my case with a 3+4 Gleason, negative margins, and no seminal vesicle or lymph involvement, my sense was that his response to my 0.09 PSA was a pretty nonplussed, “Meh.” Or, if my PSA gets to “around 0.13 ng/ml,” we might start exploring treatment options.

On the topic of doing additional testing such as scans to see if there is cancer anywhere, he said that nothing would show up on a scan or MRI with a PSA of 0.09. I want to dig into that some more.

On the topic of salvage treatments, he thought that, given my pathology, the first step would be “a little radiation.” (I’m not sure if sprawling out on the beach for 7 weeks qualifies for “a little radiation,” but it may be worth asking.) He wouldn’t do ADT (hormone therapy) in conjunction with the radiation, again, given my pathology.

Lastly, at one point during the conversation, he quite confidently made the bold prediction that I wouldn’t die from prostate cancer. You think I’d be jumping for joy. I’m not. Perhaps its my experience as a seasoned patient that’s telling me to withhold judgment on that one for the time being.

All in all, this is good news. My lack of enthusiastically embracing it, however, comes from the fact that, rather than eliminating variables to consider, I feel that this meeting introduced a few more, and that just muddied the waters. Emotionally, at this point, I just want this stupid disease to pick a path and stay on it. I may also check with the VA to see if there’s any way I can pick one doctor that I can build a relationship with rather than this new-doctor-a-quarter routine.

Day 2,459 – PSA Results

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects, Prostate Cancer, Recurrence11 Comments

My silly little trend line that I slapped on my PSA tracking chart wasn’t so silly after all. It was dead on target. My latest PSA: 0.09 ng/ml.

Crap. (Or some other four-letter expletive.)

Even though I expected this (thanks, trend line), I’m still absorbing the significance of yet another increase in my PSA.

In a way, I’m glad to see the results that I have. Certainly not because I want the cancer to come back, but because it removes some of the doubt caused by the yo-yo readings last year. Now I can come to terms with the likelihood that I really am headed down the recurrence path, and I can focus on what’s ahead.

So those are my thoughts in the first 30 minutes since seeing the results online. I’m sure there will be more thoughts to follow. I have to admit that I’m unusually unemotional about this at the moment. That’s good.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts to share once this sinks in.

 

 

Month 79 – Perspectives Gained through a Prostate Cancer Support Group

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer4 Comments

About a month ago, I joined the Prostate Cancer Support Group on Facebook just to check it out and see what sorts of things were being discussed there. It’s been interesting and educational.

Many of the posts are from those first diagnosed, struggling with the news, seeking some guidance on how to process it and where to begin. Others seek answers to treatment questions. Some just vent. A few offer up a few funny jokes or stories to lighten the mood of the group (and make us test our stress incontinence with hearty chuckles). And then there are, sadly, the one or two at the end of their journey who tell of their decision to stop treatment and just let nature run its course.

More than anything, being in the group reminds you in a very raw, unfiltered way of the physical and emotional toll that this insidious disease wreaks on the patient, his partner, and his family.

Of course, each case is unique to the individual patient, but it’s been interesting to note the differences in information being told by the physicians to the patients. For example—and because it’s of personal interest to me—you can see debates on what the definition of an “undetectable” post-surgery PSA reading is. Because the patients are being given these different numbers by their physicians, it just reinforces my frustration with the lack of consensus in the urology community.

Everyone in the group is very supportive of each other, and that’s good. There’s definitely value in sharing thoughts and experiences and just being able to scream out loud to others who can relate. However, some of the well-intentioned support can go to too far, with some of the comments bordering on misinformation or even medical advice. For the newly diagnosed and not yet educated (about prostate cancer), that can be a concern as they try to wrap their heads around all of this information before making treatment decisions.

I joined the group to see if there were any discussions about post-surgery salvage therapies should my PSA continue to rise, but it seems most of the discussions are with the newly diagnosed or those who are already in the advanced stages of the disease. For now, I’ll keep monitoring the conversations, gleaning what I can (and taking much of it with a grain of salt). If my August PSA shows another increase, I’ll start overtly asking questions and see what sort of responses I get.

Reading the posts of those in the advanced stages of prostate cancer has given me a new respect for what those patients are going through. It’s also made me question how I would want to approach the advancing cancer should it happen to me.

When I read the narratives about the side effects of hormone therapy I, frankly, get scared. So many of the men in the forum (or their wives) speak of how the therapy has had a significant impact on their ability to function. The fatigue, the moodiness, the hot flashes, and more. As I recall, one person spoke of how her husband was sleeping upwards of 20 hours per day.

It’s under those circumstances that I begin to ask myself—and I ask this without judgment of anyone else’s decision—Is it really worth going through all this if you’re going to sleep 18-20 hours a day? Is that really living? Why prolong life if you’re unable to function in your daily tasks? Is the “cure” worse than the actual disease?

I guess that’s just the pragmatic engineer of German ancestry coming out in me. If and when I get to that stage, I may change my tune. “Hell yes, it’s worth it!” But then I stumbled across this poignant article in the New York Times, At His Own Wake, Celebrating Life and the Gift of Death, that talks about medical assistance in dying, and it reinforced the desire that most of us have to be in control of our own fate for as long as we possibly can.

I hope that I won’t have to make any of these decisions for a very, very long time. In the mean time, I’ll continue to offer support where I can in the group, and learn more about salvage therapy from the experience of others.

Day 2,343–A Struggle

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects, Prostate Cancer15 Comments

I’m surprised by how much getting my PSA results 30 hours ago affected me yesterday and today. It’s been a real struggle.

Anger. That’s the word of the last 24 hours. I just want to scream, “Would you make up your fucking mind already?!?! Either come back and let’s battle this cancer shit head-on, or get the fuck out of my life once and for all!!” (Told you I’m pissed.) It’s the uncertainty that comes with each test result that’s getting to me. And the fact that this will happen every four months for the foreseeable future is growing really tiresome.

Logic tells the data-driven part of me that I’m okay—that I’m still considered to be cancer-free for now. It’s probably because I am so data-driven that I’m getting so angered and frustrated. Cancer doesn’t always follow a logical path; it doesn’t always fit neatly into cells in a spreadsheet. I need be better at accepting that fact. (You would have thought that I would have learned this after 6+ years of dealing with this.)

Cancer sucks.

Sorry if I offended with my language, but when I started this blog, it was intended to be a raw sharing of thoughts and emotions, and it’s something that I needed to do today, otherwise my head would explode. Really.

And, no, I’m not wishing for the cancer to come back. I’m grateful that I’m still here and able to whine about it. Truly. I guess frayed nerves, anger, and frustration are small prices to pay for longevity.

 

 

Day 2,212 – PSA Results

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer11 Comments

My latest PSA test on 28 November came back at 0.06 ng/ml, up slightly from the 0.05 ng/ml back on 1 August.

That could just be the difference between a new moon and a full moon or simple instrument error. It’s a concern, but certainly nothing to panic over at the moment.

I’m glad to see that I’m consistently hovering in that 0.04–0.08 range, although, if I were to lay a trendline over the data, it would certainly be moving in an upward direction towards that recurrence threshold.

The one nagging thing that hangs over my head is those recent studies that showed PSA at 0.03 ng/ml can be predictive of recurrence. I’ll press the doctor on that again at my appointment on 29 December.

Lastly, I’ve accepted the fact that this will be my new reality: Testing, waiting, and wondering every four months. Not the path I hoped to be on six years out, but it is what it is.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts, support, and prayers.

psa-tracker-20161130

 

Month 69 – On Reflection

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects, Prostate Cancer, RecurrenceLeave a comment

It’s been a week since my last PSA results came in—it seems like eons ago—and I really have been able to just ignore them for pretty much the entire time. That’s good.

With the yo-yo movement in my PSA over the last 4 tests, I can’t conclude much of anything aside from the fact that there will be more PSA testing in my future.

PSA Trend 20160803

The engineer in me reflected on the last year of testing looking for some logical explanation.

I do remember that a year ago, just before the September test, I made the mistake of having an orgasm within 24 hours of the test. I thought that may have explained in the increase from undetectable to 0.05 ng/ml. But then the doctor threw in the possibility of the new ultra sensitive PSA test skewing the results. Two variables that weren’t present for the previous undetectable test.

For the December and April tests, I eliminated one variable by abstaining from orgasms for a nearly a week before the blood draw. The doctor asked me to abstain for two weeks for the August test, and I did.

If the next PSA test 3–4 months from now stays in the 0.05–0.08 range, I’ll be more inclined to think that this is a result in the change to the ultra sensitive test and nothing more. (Part of me wants to go to another lab for an independent test and see what it produces, but that will just introduce one more variable when we’re trying to eliminate them.)

At 0.05–0.08 ng/ml, I’m still well below the widely accepted biochemical recurrence threshold of 0.2 ng/ml. That generally makes me breathe a sigh of relief, and I think that I can come to terms with living with those numbers if that’s all it is.

But a UCLA study published in May 2015 showed that, under certain conditions, the ultra sensitive PSA threshold of 0.03 ng/ml was a good predictor of recurrence.  Yes, it was a small (247 patients) retrospective study, but that little fact has stuck in the back of my mind and gives me concern. (I wrote in more detail about it in my Day 1,768 post.)

There was also a Johns Hopkins study published in February 2016 that also indicated that low PSA levels measured by an ultra-sensitive PSA test were predictors of recurrence.

So I’m going to just wait until the doctor appointment on 23 August and see what she has to say about all this. It will be interesting—maybe even entertaining.

Day 2,093 – The Results

On By DanIn Emotional Aspects, Prostate Cancer, Recurrence13 Comments

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.