Tag: salvage radiation therapy

Day 4,117 – Radiation Oncologist Consult

On By DanIn Radiation Therapy2 Comments

This afternoon, I took a leisurely stroll down to my local radiation oncologist’s office…

That sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke, but it’s not. I walked the 0.9 mile / 1.5 km walk from my home to the UCSD Radiation Oncology center for my first consult there.

My original appointment was for 3:30 p.m., but at 11:40 a.m., they called and said they had a cancellation and asked if I could come in at 2 p.m. Sure. Let’s get this over with.

The radiation oncologist (RO) was very welcoming and very direct in talking about my options, which I appreciated very much. He’s been pretty much exclusively zapping prostates since 2010, which helped build up confidence in his experience and abilities. When he mentioned that he studied at University of Chicago (my hometown), we got off topic and talked about deep-dish pizza and Italian beef sandwiches for a moment.

The key points from the conversation:

  • He recommended proceeding with the radiation at 70 Gy for 7 weeks (IMRT/IGRT), but thought it wasn’t necessary to begin it immediately.
  • He said given my numbers and the negative PSMA PET scan, he would zap only the prostate bed and not the pelvic lymph nodes.
  • I should not let my PSA get above 0.5 ng/mL before starting radiation. Of course, starting sooner rather than later would be better.
  • The risk of long-term side effects appears to be lower than what I had in my mind.

When talking about the likelihood of success, the RO chuckled a little when I mentioned the nomogram numbers. Apparently, he isn’t a fan of nomograms. When I mentioned that the urologist at the VA said that salvage radiation was possibly curative, he chuckled at that, too. He was pretty blunt when he said that salvage radiation would be a “50-50 crap shoot” when it comes to long-term suppression of the cancer. The reason we do it, though, is to squash it hard enough and long enough to significantly slow its progression and buy years of life.

We talked at length about quality of life and life expectancy. He asked if I expected to be here in 10 years, to which I replied, “I don’t know.” My dad and his mom both died unexpectedly at the age of 69—that’s only 5 years away. Will I follow in their footsteps? Who knows. He thought that not doing salvage radiation may be an option if my chances of not living another 10 years are good. But if I thought I would live beyond 10 years, then do the radiation now.

It was interesting that throughout the discussion, he talked solely about salvage radiation without mentioning hormone therapy other than it being the next step after radiation. But then near the end of the conversation, he recommended six months of hormone therapy for me starting at the end of radiation to “really knock down the cancer.” I’m not sure I was expecting that.

We agreed that it would be okay to wait until my next PSA test in early April to see what that shows. But he reminded me that the cancer is there and it is growing. He offered me his card and said to call if I had any other questions.

All in all, I’m pleased with how the discussion went. The RO’s candor was refreshing and I was impressed with the UCSD staff and facility. I left feeling more at ease than I was when I went in. (In fact, little gremlins were doing a jig in my stomach a good chunk of the morning before the appointment.) Am I 100% sold that this is the path I want to pursue? Not yet. But I’m much closer to it than I was when I woke up this morning.

The whole, “When do you think you’ll die?” conversation was a little unnerving and simultaneously thought-provoking. It’s been a while since I’ve had a full-blown physical, so it may be worth checking under the hood to see if everything is in order before starting radiation.

In my mind, if the April PSA comes back higher than the 0.26 ng/mL in January, I’d be more inclined to start sooner. But if it comes back at the 0.21-0.22 ng/mL that it was in June, July, or October, I may be inclined to kick the can down the road a little longer. I don’t know.

As I told a friend yesterday, it’s time to go sit on a mountain top and process all of this information.

More to come.

Be well!

Salvage Radiation Therapy Nomograms

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer, Recurrence2 Comments

I’ve been playing around with two nomograms that offer predictions on the outcome of salvage radiation therapy (SRT). One if from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and the other is from the Cleveland Clinic (CC). They are similar in design, but the MSKCC nomogram requires more detailed information to be input by the patient, but the CC nomogram provides a more information at the output.

Summary

Both nomograms gave results that are in the same ballpark, with the CC nomogram being a bit more conservative.

MSKCC said that I would have a 64% chance of being progression-free after 6 years after SRT; CC said that I have a 59% chance of being progression-free after 5 years, and 45% chance of being progression-free at 10 years.

The CC nomogram takes it one step further and estimates a 6% cumulative chance of metastasis at 5 years, and a 12% cumulative chance of metastasis at 10 years.

MSKCC Nomogram

MSKCC Salvage Radiation Therapy Nomogram link: https://www.mskcc.org/nomograms/prostate/salvage_radiation_therapy

In order to use the MSKCC SRT nomogram, you will first need to calculate your PSA Doubling Time, and they specify that you should use the PSA values obtained in the last twelve months.

MSKCC PSA Doubling Time Calculator link: https://www.mskcc.org/nomograms/prostate/psa_doubling_time

The MSKCC SRT nomogram requires you to provide:

  • Pre-surgery PSA value.
  • Most recent PSA value.
  • PSA Doubling Time.
  • How many months have passed before your PSA reached 2.0 ng/mL or higher. [Interesting note: The field only accepts values between 0 and 72 months and, for me, it took 125 months to cross the 0.2 ng/mL threshold. I’m guessing that may mean that my result will be a bit conservative because I had to plug in 72 months instead of 125.]
  • Your Gleason score.
  • Information about your:
    • Surgical margins.
    • Extracapsular extension.
    • Seminal vesicles.
    • Pelvic lymph nodes.
  • Whether your PSA remained elevated post-surgery.
  • The planned radiation dose. (I left this set at their default value of 65 Gy because I had no idea.)
  • Whether you will be undergoing hormone therapy before or along with radiation. (I checked “No” as there has been no discussion of that so far.)

After plugging all of that information in, here are my results:

Cleveland Clinic Nomogram

Cleveland Clinic Salvage Radiation Therapy nomogram link: https://riskcalc.org/ProstateCancerAfterRadicalProstatectomyNew/

The CC nomogram asks you to provide:

  • Whether you will be receiving SRT alone or with concurrent Androgen Deprivation Therapy.
  • Surgical Gleason score.
  • Extracapsular extension.
  • Surgical margin status.
  • Seminal vesicle invasion.
  • Pre-SRT PSA level.
  • Prostate Bed Radiation Dose. [It was interesting to note that CC defaulted this to a dose greater than or equal to 6600 Gy, but it does give you the option to select “<6600”. To be able to compare the CC nomogram results with the MSKCC results, I changed that to be <6600 Gy so the doses would be similar.]

My results are below (click to enlarge):

Interestingly, if I bump up the radiation dose to >=6600 Gy, then my percentages change to 65% free at 5 years and 53% free at 10 years. That makes sense, but do higher radiation doses translate into higher risk of side effects? I’m guessing so. Something to ask the radiation oncologist on Thursday.

Conclusion

Certainly, those are average to good probabilities, but are they good enough to risk impact to quality of life? I don’t know. Of course, the next step is to dig deeper into the risks of real impact on quality of life after salvage radiation.

I’m thankful to everyone who provided information about their own experiences, either here in comments on my previous posts or in other forums. They’ve been very insightful and give me an understanding of the range of possibilities to expect. But each case is unique, and I have to remember that, should I choose this, my case will be different from everyone else’s.

More to come.

Month 135 – Approaching SRT Decision Point

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer, Recurrence, Side Effects24 Comments

My visit with the urologist this week went about as expected.

We talked about my PSMA PET scan results—negative—and he was of the mindset that those would be the expected results at my PSA level. The scan isn’t reliably sensitive enough when the PSA is hovering around 0.2 ng/ml.

With my steadily increasing PSA, he said that there’s cancer there somewhere. In his view, it’s likely location is still in the prostate bed, but we can’t rule out that there aren’t micro-metastases elsewhere.

In reviewing the totality of my case, he commented, “This is one of the trickier cases I’ve seen.” I don’t believe he was too offended when I replied, “No shit, Sherlock.” I guess my frustration of dealing with this over the years came out a little too strong.

What puzzled him about my case is how long after my surgery the PSA returned and how slowly it was increasing over the years. That led to a discussion about PSA doubling time and how my doubling time is shortening at an accelerating rate.

As part of that discussion, I asked him how many data points should be included in the PSA doubling time calculations, and he typically uses only the last three to get a current snapshot of where it is now. (I re-ran my numbers when I got home, and using the last three PSAs, my doubling time is 19.9 months.)

Of course, the engineer in me had to play with that a little, so I went through my PSA spreadsheet and calculated the PSA doubling time if I used the last three values after each test. The results were all over the place:

His recommendation, of course, was salvage radiation to the prostate bed.

He thought that salvage radiation still had a chance of being curative at this point, and given that I’m 64 years old, he thought that I would have plenty of years ahead of me should I choose to go down that path.

We talked about long-term side effects. He thought that there was a 20% to 30% chance that my stress incontinence would worsen, as would my sexual function given where it’s currently at now. He wasn’t confident enough to speak about the chances of rectal issues, at least in the numbers that I was seeking. I expressed concern about the incontinence, and he reminded me that they can take care of that with an artificial sphincter. Great. Another surgery.

I did ask how much longer I could kick this can a little farther down the road, and he didn’t seem to think that that was a good idea at this point. My stomach turned into knots.

We agreed to set up the consult with the radiation oncologist, as well as retest my PSA in early April.

Wednesday afternoon, I received a call from the scheduler trying to set up the radiation oncologist referral. She gave me the option of going to Naval Medical Center San Diego—where I used to work and had a previous referral—or going to University of California San Diego (UCSD). As good a medical treatment facility as NMCSD is, I opted for UCSD. If nothing else than for a second perspective, plus I believe UCSD will have more state-of-the-art equipment and a lower turnover rate in medical teams.

Thursday, morning, UCSD called and we’re set up to meet next Thursday, 17 February 2022. I was a little surprised when they told me that it would be at their Radiation Oncology center that’s about three-quarters of a mile (one kilometer) from my house instead of their main hospital in San Diego.

As you regular readers already know, I’ve been fearful of getting to this point for a while now. Whether my fears are irrational, unfounded or not, I don’t know, but they’re real for me.

My fears center more on having very real, quality of life-impacting side effects from the radiation than on whether or not the radiation will be curative. For some inexplicable reason, my gut intuition is that something will go awry and I’ll be in that 1% or 3% or 10%—or whatever it is—group that gets to experience those side effects impacting quality of life. The radiation oncologist is going to have to give a strong sales pitch to convince me the risks are minimal.

There will be ton of soul-searching and thinking in the days and weeks ahead.

Stay tuned.

Dr. Kwon Video – Part 2

On By DanIn imaging, Prostate Cancer, Recurrence, Treatment6 Comments

Here’s the second part of Dr. Kwon’s video. Like the first video, it’s very informative (perhaps even more so, at least for me).

Even though I had seen similar statistics before, one of the kickers for me is that only 33% of recurrent cancer is found in the prostate bed (local); 45% will be metastatic; and 22% will be both local and metastatic. As Dr. Kwon rightly points out, knowing where the cancer is located will guide your treatment decisions, and that’s why I have been so reluctant to blindly step into salvage radiation therapy without having first identified the location of the cancer. Why risk the possible toxic side effects of radiation if you’re not radiating in the correct location?

In my previous post, I mentioned that Dr. Kwon was a pioneer in dealing with oligometastatic prostate cancer. At the beginning, many in the profession dismissed his work out of hand (I’ll admit I was skeptical, too), but it seems that over the last 10 years, his work has gained the respect of others and is supported by further research.

In any case, this video is 31 minutes long and I encourage you to watch it.

Eleven Years

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer5 Comments

It was eleven years ago today that I received my diagnosis and began this little adventure, and I’m glad that, eleven years later, I’m still here to write about it. Of course, the fact that I’d be writing about it eleven years later never even crossed my mind when I started this little ol’ blog back then. Even so, I’m glad that I’ve kept it going.

On Tuesday, I had my appointment with the urologist to review my latest PSA results. In all honesty, it was probably a waste of both of our time and should have been postponed until after the PSMA PET scan.

Because today is Veterans Day, a federal holiday, they didn’t book any appointments in the clinic for today, so that meant that they overbooked appointments on Tuesday. That meant that the doctor was really pressed for time, and I was okay with keeping the meeting short.

The whole conversation went like this:

Dr.: Hi. What’s the status of the PSMA PET scan?

Me: It’s scheduled on 30 November.

Dr.: How are we going to get the results?

Me: I don’t know. I have to figure that out with UCLA. Not to sound rude, but given how new this is, are you going to know what to do with the results?

Dr. Oh, yeah. Not a problem. You can just hand-carry the results if you want. Everything else okay?

Me: Yep. Fine. So if the PSMA scan shows the cancer is still in the prostate bed, and given my PSA doubling time is 45 months, what do you see as the next step?

Dr.: Radiation. (Said without a hint of hesitancy.)

Me: Uh, okay.

And that was basically the conversation, with a few other minor details and questions not worthy of putting in writing. I don’t think she picked up on my reluctance to get zapped or, if she did, it was something that she, as the physician, wanted to overrule.

We agreed to schedule a follow-up in January with another PSA test in advance of the meeting and, hopefully, with the PSMA PET scan results in hand for all. For some reason, they get slammed just before and after the holidays, and the first available appointment was 8 February. I’m generally okay with that, but if the scan and the early January PSA tests reveal something compelling, I’ll try to reschedule sometime earlier.

So that’s about how I expected the appointment to go (even without the rushing).

Oh. I almost forgot. I’m now retired from work! Woo-hoo!

Yes, I took the leap, perhaps a little sooner than I expected, but that’s okay. I added everything up and it was just time.

I’ll be 64 years old in January, and there isn’t a whole lot of longevity in our family. Dad died at 69; his mom died at 69; and mom died at 73. I can’t say that the past is prologue, but you get the picture. As cliché as it is, tomorrow isn’t promised and, after 40+ years in the workforce, I wanted to reserve my tomorrows for me. Selfish, I know. 😄

Given where I’m at in my cancer journey, I also wanted to use as many good tomorrows as I can before radiation, hormone therapy, or the disease itself turns them into bad tomorrows.

Finally, frustration at work exceeded fun and rewards, so that was another good indicator that it was time to start the next chapter of my life.

My last day was 29 October, so I’m still adapting, trying to find a new routine. (It’s challenging going from 100 m.p.h. to zero!) I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I have another trip in the near future, and I’m excited about that.

So that’s it for this post.

Be well!

Exceptions to “early salvage” radiation treatment for recurrence after prostatectomy — THE “NEW” PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

On By DanIn Prostate CancerLeave a comment

Here’s an interesting article about salvage radiation.

Three major randomized clinical trials and a meta-analysis have proved that for most men waiting for early signs of recurrence after prostatectomy (e.g., three consecutive PSA rises or a PSA of 0.1 ng/ml) to give radiation gave the same outcome as immediate (“adjuvant”) radiation (see this link). But there are exceptions. In some men, adjuvant […]

Exceptions to “early salvage” radiation treatment for recurrence after prostatectomy — THE “NEW” PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK

Day 3,819 – Doctor’s Visit

On By DanIn imaging, Incontinence, Prostate Cancer5 Comments
The dreaded tools of the DRE trade.

My visit to the urologist this afternoon went just as expected, and even a little better.

With the San Diego VA Medical Center being a teaching hospital, it’s rare that I see the same doctor twice. Because I liked the doctor I saw last time because of the conversation we had and the plan that we mapped out together, I specifically requested to see her again this time. Unfortunately, a young resident showed up in her place.

That actually may have worked to my advantage.

Dr. K started the conversation by asking if I had come to a decision as to whether I wanted to do salvage radiation therapy or hormone therapy. I was a bit taken aback by that—”Haven’t we skipped a few steps here, Doc?”—but then I remembered the way that Dr. L wrote up her notes from my visit with her, it would be easy for him to come to that conclusion.

I filled in a few of the blanks with Dr. K regarding our plan to follow up the negative CT and bone scans with an Axumin or PSMA PET scan in hopes of finding the cancer before making the SRT vs. ADT decision. He dutifully reminded me that either or both scans could come back negative, too, meaning that the cancer was still likely in the pelvis or prostate bed.

Interestingly, when we were talking about the merits of the Axumin and PSMA PET scans, he immediately went to, “Why even bother with the Axumin scan; go straight to the PSMA scan.” I didn’t even have to nudge him in that direction. He and I were on the same page.

To his knowledge, though, SD VAMC had not yet referred anyone to get a PSMA PET scan, but he seemed eager to figure our how to make it happen and have me be the first (or among the first) to be referred. He wasn’t even sure where to begin, so I told him.

Instructions for PSMA Referral

I opened my file folder that I had with me and pulled out the one-page sheet that I had put together, stepping him through the referral process that UCLA had shared with me. It was all there for him, and he asked, “May I keep this?”

He did admit, though, that he had no idea how long it may take to get approval from the hospital team before he could even ask for the referral, so this may play out over a few weeks or longer. Rest assured that I’ll keep on top of this, asking for periodic updates.

I’m pretty excited that we’re moving in the direction of going straight to the PSMA PET scan, but also recognize there can be a number of administrative twists and turns along the way.

In the interim, we agreed to test my PSA again in early November, keeping on a four-month testing cycle. I’m okay with that while we’re trying to sort everything else out.

We also talked about my incontinence episodes becoming more frequent and more substantial in the last 6 weeks or so. He wanted to rule out a urinary tract infection, so he sent me off for some labs and we’ll see what they yield.

These episodes have put me back in incontinence pads for the last few weeks. Before, a sneeze or a cough would yield a few drops; now, they yield a squirt. Not good.

More to monitor and report on going forward.

That’s it for this post.

Be well!

Day 3,910 – Bone Scan Results

On By DanIn imaging, Prostate Cancer, Recurrence6 Comments

As a baby boomer, I grew up with Spock. Both of them.

First, there was Dr. Benjamin Spock, the noted pediatrician who told my parents—and millions of other parents—how to raise and care for their kids. Then, of course, there was the Star Trek Spock, whose existence was rooted in Vulcan logic.

Now I’m not a Trekkie, but if you’ve read any part of this blog, you do know that facts, figures, and logic are high on my priority list, too. I thought, “What better way is there to outline the possible scenarios and decisions that are ahead of me than to put them all in a flow chart.” So here goes:

So let’s step through this.

We start with the CT and Bone scans that happened over the last two weeks. The first question is, “Did those scans determine the location of the prostate cancer (PCa)?”

If the answer is yes, then the next question is, “Was the prostate cancer in the prostate bed and/or pelvis?”

PCa in Prostate Bed/Pelvis

If the answer is yes, the PCa is in the prostate bed and/or pelvis, then Salvage Radiation Therapy (SRT) with or without Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) (Hormone therapy) offers the last possible chance of a true cure. Of course, there are risks associated with SRT that would impact your daily quality of life: bowel control, bladder control, and lack of sexual function. Additionally, depending on which study you look at, SRT may be successful only 30% to 70% of the time. (Green bubble above.)

PCa is Not in Prostate Bed/Pelvis

But if the answer is no, the PCa is outside of the prostate bed and pelvis, that means the PCa is now distant and likely metastasized. If that’s the case, there is no cure and the PCa can only be managed with hormone therapy and perhaps chemotherapy. (Orange bubble above.)

CT and Bone Scans do not Locate the Prostate Cancer

We’ve talked at some length that neither the CT scan nor the bone scan have the sensitivity to pick up the cancer’s location based on my PSA level of 0.21 ng/mL. It was very likely that neither would pick up the cancer at that first decision point on the flow chart, so further investigation is required by using the Axumin or PSMA PET scan.

CT and Bone Scan Results

In fact, neither the CT nor the bone scan picked up the location of the cancer:

No definite scintigraphic evidence of metastatic bone disease and no evidence of a widespread osseous process

So that’s actually good news with the bone scan. It shows that it has not metastasized to the bones, which is definitely a good thing. (Or, at least if there is metastasis to the bones, it’s at a level that’s unable to be picked up by the sensitivity of the scan.)

Next Steps

We follow my red arrows above and run the Axumin or PSMA PET scans (or both) to see if either of those can pick up the location of the cancer. I’ll have that discussion with the urologist on 3 August 2021, and we’ll see when we can get them on the calendar.

If the Axumin and/or PSMA find the cancer in the prostate bed/pelvis, then we go back to the section above and land on SRT as the option. But if it’s found outside the prostate bed/pelvis, then we go back to the other section where we just manage with ADT. (If the lesion outside the pelvis is well-defined, it may be something that could be zapped in its location. Something to explore.)

If the Axumin or PSMA PET scan cannot locate the PCa, then things get fuzzy fast.

Sure, we could go ahead and blindly complete the salvage radiation therapy, hoping that we’re zapping in the correct place. Or, we could continue to monitor for a while longer and then retest to see if the cancer can be pinpointed.

This may have been a bit of an oversimplification of what’s ahead for me, but I’m hoping that it makes sense to you.

Be well!

Watch “Rising PSA: How Soon Should You Get a Scan? | Thomas Hope, MD & Mark Moyad, MD | 2021 PCRI” on YouTube

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer, Recurrence, Treatment1 Comment

Wow. This could not be more applicable to my current circumstances and certainly gives me food for thought.

Day 3,869 – PSA, Imaging, and Salvage Radiation

On By DanIn Prostate Cancer, Recurrence, Research7 Comments

Today was a tough day. The news of my PSA increasing to 0.21 ng/ml weighed heavily on me throughout the day. It even made me a little snippy in a meeting this morning, as my tolerance for trivial bullsh*t decreased to an all-time low. Oh well. They’ll get over it.

Long-time readers of this blog already know that I’ve delayed starting salvage radiation therapy because I’m reluctant to incur the short- and long-term side effects of radiation without having a higher degree of confidence that we’re actually zapping in the correct location(s)—zapping the cancer itself.

Of course, the current state of imaging for prostate cancer generally sucks, but it is getting better with advances like PSMA PET scans using 68Ga-PSMA-11 where prostate cancer can be located much earlier and much more accurately than using previous technologies such as bone scans. But even 68Ga PSMA PET scans have their limitations.

One of the greatest challenges (gambles?) in deciding when to start salvage radiation therapy is the timing. Most will argue the earlier, the better. Statistics show that in most cases, the cancer is still in the prostate bed or pelvic region, so the radiation oncologists start blindly zapping those regions hoping the statistics are correct. But the cancer could have already spread to more remote locations.

With my PSA doubling time in the 4-5 year range, my team and I have decided to hold off on salvage radiation therapy and, in so doing, I’ve avoided any radiation side effects for five years giving me a high quality of life during that time. That has value to me. Of course, none of us know whether the little buggers have been hanging out in the prostate bed during that time (like statistics would show), or if they’ve gone on one of their own infamous road trips and have started spreading.

One of the things that I’ve been trying to determine for months now is at what PSA level can the Ga68 PSMA PET scan begin to reliably pick up prostate cancer. The answer typically was in the 1.0 to 2.0 range for the PSA. With a PSA a fraction of that (0.21) the PSMA PET scan really wouldn’t be a reliable tool for me yet. It’s not a completely worthless tool, but there are decent chances that I could come away with a false negative result.

Tonight, I stumbled across this paper that provided some insights: Assessment of 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET Accuracy in Localizing Recurrent Prostate Cancer: A Prospective Single-Arm Clinical Trial.

The chart below taken from the paper was exactly what I was looking for and more. First, it shows the number of cases where patients with an increasing PSA after prostatectomy have positive results based on their PSA level. For those with PSAs less than 0.5 ng/ml (me), the number of positive cases was only 38%. In other words, there’s about a one in three chance that the Ga68 PSMA PET will be able to locate the cancer at that PSA level. Not good odds, but better than zero.

To me, the really interesting thing about this chart is that it shows the location of where the PSMA PET scan found the cancer by PSA level.

Fendler WP, Calais J, Eiber M, Flavell RR, Mishoe A, Feng FY, Nguyen HG, Reiter RE, Rettig MB, Okamoto S, Emmett L, Zacho HD, Ilhan H, Wetter A, Rischpler C, Schoder H, Burger IA, Gartmann J, Smith R, Small EJ, Slavik R, Carroll PR, Herrmann K, Czernin J, Hope TA. Assessment of 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET Accuracy in Localizing Recurrent Prostate Cancer: A Prospective Single-Arm Clinical Trial. JAMA Oncol. 2019 Jun 1;5(6):856-863. doi: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2019.0096. PMID: 30920593; PMCID: PMC6567829.

You can see that more than half of the cancer in patients with PSAs below 0.5 were found either in the prostate bed or pelvic region, both of which should be very treatable with salvage radiation therapy.

However, once the cancer is in other the other regions—extrapelvic nonbone (other organs), bone, or multiple regions—the cancer becomes very difficult if not impossible to treat. At that point, it’s only managed.

Please keep in mind that those are my non-expert opinions that I will have to confirm with my medical team to make sure I’m interpreting things correctly.

You can see that, as your PSA increases above 0.5 ng/ml, the cancer was found more broadly in the study participants. By that, I mean the cancer had spread beyond the prostate bed and pelvic region. You can also see, however, that even with PSAs less than 0.5, the cancer has already spread elsewhere in about 40% of the patients in the study with that PSA level.

That’s the whole point of knowing this. If the cancer has already spread, there’s no sense in zapping the prostate bed or pelvis risking long-term radiation side effects adversely impacting quality of life for no gain whatsoever.

This is only one study with 635 patients, so I am taking the results above with a healthy dose of skepticism, and I’ll continue to do more research in the three weeks before my appointment. But this study will be a good conversation opener for the consultation.

Some of the questions that are on the top of my bald head are:

  • Should we run another PSA test to see if this was an outlier/anomaly like some of my previous PSA tests (I’ve been using the same lab all along)?
  • How much weight does PSA doubling time have now that we’ve crossed the 0.2 ng/ml threshold?
  • Would he support getting the Ga68 PSMA PET scan done at this PSA level?
  • If not, at what PSA level would he support getting the PSMA PET scan?
  • Would he be willing to give me a referral to get one done even if I have to pay for it myself?

Fortunately, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the Ga68 PSMA PET scan at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and that would be a 2.5-3 hour drive for me to get up there to have the scan.

In the meantime, I’m going to have to reconcile in my own mind how high I’m going to let my PSA get before taking action, scan or not.

Lots of research, thinking, and soul-searching ahead. But be forewarned: My trivial B.S. tolerance level is way less than my PSA. 🙂