I haven't been very good about writing here on this blog. If I want to document year one any more than I have, I'll have to go from memory. That said, this weekend is the one-year "cancerversary" from when it all began. A year ago today (I'm going by weekday, not date), October 6, 2017, I had my PSA checked because I was having some obvious symptoms, which I documented in an early blog post.
So today (one year from when my GP called me with my initial PSA results), I'm going in for my six-week lab work. My PSA started at 5,306 last year and went down steadily during chemo and with Lupron shots every three months. Sometimes my PSA would go down by consistently by 30 or 40 percent each checkup while during treatment and for a few months after. We got all the way down to 22, which is still a pretty elevated level, but compared to where I started it was nearly miracles. As it stands, 22 is my nadir.
Twelve weeks ago my PSA rose to 24. Then six weeks ago it went up to 27. Depending on today's labs, we'll probably start talking about second line treatment. My oncologist and I have discussed various options, but we wanted to wait to see if the PSA would go up again. There's a clinical trial I might join. It's the CHAARTED2 trial that is a phase 2 trial testing the efficacy of Zytiga by itself as comapared to Zytiga and cabazitaxel (Javatana) together.
So I'm going to try and document year two more in real time. Chemo brain or not, my memory isn't what it used to be. And it didn't used to be much...
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