One advanced prostate cancer survivor's story of living through incurable prostate cancer with one life extending treatment at a time.
How Short Can a Life Extension Be : Short
Not only did they change me from Zytiga to Xtandi but I was changed from Firmagon shots, first to Eligard in April and then Lupron shots after checking my testosterone and finding it was out of range high. Now that doesn't mean I had more testosterone than I know what to do with, it meant I was running above 50. Normal men would be several hundred. PSA would drop from the 3.25 in January to 0.35 in February and 0.31 in March. We're back on track, things are looking good. April would bring an end to that with a PSA of 0.63, almost doubled in a month. Three weeks later 0.78. Another month would be 1.21, definitely trending back up. I was having some pain in my upper spine during this. It was time for a new scan. I didn't qualify for the new PSMA pet scan, instead I had a bone scan and CT scan. The pain was justified the T5 vertebrae had an active tumor.
The End of Two
This extension gave me five more months and I am considered castration resistant. That is when the hormone therapy no longer can control the cancer by itself. This means additional treatments on top of the hormone therapy. I still wasn't seeing these as life extensions just part of the journey. The realization was coming.