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my husband had sugury two years ago
after the needle test it came back grade 4 gleason 8
fininding after the surgury
gleason score 7 involving 20 % of prostatic
tumor extend to margins bladder neck margin
venous absent
lymphatic absent
perineural present
seminal vesicle absent
lymph nodes negative for tumor
6 months after the sugury his psa 0.1
10 months 0.9
told to get radation
psa 6 months after radation psa 0.2
psa 12 months after 0.8
As you can just imagine his sprits are down even after the doc said don'nt worry
anyone out there experince this & then later have the psa drop again.
any advice or incourament would be so appercaited.
th
Joyce did you actually mean he was "told" to get radiation, or did the doc mention the pros and cons of doing such, did he mention the possible odds/percentages or elude to that it is a best guess scenario or total gamble???? I am curious because I got 8 opinions and heard alot of what I would question then and now, and also know was b.s. and sales pitches to us patients. Nobody believes that such things happen, they do.
Well if your husband decides to fight this beast medically/drugs seek a PCa oncologist is the best idea. You might wish to get more proactive and learn all about the multitude of possible drug protocols and perhaps choose one over another, as you can. Or with a good oncologist you probably could get a solid treatment with your best interests and wishes (side effects considered etc. I have a post down the thread line that shows plenty of possible drugs used against PCa, the uro-docs are unskilled, untrained and thus uninformed compared to the PCa onco-docs, is the actual truth.
There are alot of ups and down with PCa, as you know as being a wife in this. Your support and comforting to him may help him get through the down periods.
7 yrs.-warrior on PCa~ drugs used: flomax, zoladex, lupron, casodex, proscar, coumadin, DES (bpsa 2002 46.6, today 2009- .36)
what does pca stand for & what does (bpsa stand for he was told to get the radation, the doc who gave him the radation told him about the side effects.
this visit when the psa went up to 0.7 they told him just don'nt worry it could be inffect tissue left behind from his sugury two years ago that might have made it rise.
it is very tough on him right now.
As Joe says, this is a complex disease and it is often very difficult to get your head around all the terms use. You ask for the meaning of two – pca and bpsa.
pca is shorthand for prostate cancer. It is often written as PCa and sometimes CaP, especially by medical people, but there are other variances.
bpsa can mean a number of things, depending on where it is used. The most common use is in reference to what is termed ‘bound’ PSA in test where the ‘free PSA’ is being measured, although, juts to confuse you further, it can also mean ‘benign PSA’. If you tell us where you have come across the term, we may be able to help you understand it.
If the PSA numbers you have given are correct and from the same laboratory (see PSA 101 for some simple explanations that might help to understand why this is important) then you should consult an oncologist, not a urologist or a radiologist. An oncologist specializes in Cancer and is the best person to advise you and your husband what steps should be taken next. As Rob Parsons says, it would be in your interests to consult more than one oncologist, but this may be difficult and costly, depending on your circumstances.
It is likely that an oncologist will prescribe some form of what is called hormone treatment – more properly ADT (Androgen Deprivation Therapy) and although some men suffer from bad side effects with this treatment, many are able to use it to manage the disease for many years. I myself was diagnosed nearly 13 years ago and started on ADT two years back when my PSA hit 42.0 ng/ml. I’m still going strong.
thank you so your advice.
greatly appercaited.
I now have my husband looking into your sight
it will be a good thing for him,I also want him to jion a support gruop, but I quess this will take some time, right now he is just so down.
i just hope he continues, the last couple days he has not gone on, sometimes I think his mind needs to break from his cancer
Thanks again
Joyce.
Aloha Joyce,
Prostate cancer (PCa) is not simple and can be overwhelmingly complicated. PCa can be as different from one man to another, as there are number of men. Wrapping our minds around this is not easy and sometimes (more than less) we need help to digest what we read & study so that our brains (conscience thinking) can understand what is happening to us.
My wife Sandy knew something was wrong over a year ago, but it was not until last September that I needed help, a year from my treatment.
Through social services (BHS), I was aimed in a direction of therapy, meditation, prayer, and medication to overcome my anxiety about what was happening to me. These feelings about oneself will not go away by them selves. They will progressively get worse. Unless we have very strong family support (spend lots of time listening, understanding, compassion, etc.), we need that outside intervention which can include medication.
Faith, Hope, & Love,
Joe
bPsa can also reference baseline or first psa test ever done on a patient, which in my unreal case first psa test ever turned out to be bPsa: 46.6 (slightly abnormal.....yeah)
