Cancer Journal #7 Dec 26

     A note on numbers. In my first blog, I referred to a PSA# of 24. In my entry on the drop in my PSA, I speak of a reduction from 30 to 1.9. What’s up with that? 

     Let me explain. Just before my initial treatment, they tested my PSA for a baseline. I did not write of that. That number came to 29.9. At the time, the doctor, in speaking of it, rounded it down to 29. Later, when the PSA took a dramatic drop, he rounded it up to 30. I like him better for doing that. 

    

 Also, in going online to the Patient Portal and checking my lab report, I find that the drop was down to 1.8, not 1.9 as I think I reported before. Either I misheard or the doctor misspoke. Probably the former. No big deal but just to avoid confusion. 

     The Patient Portal has a graph of the progression of my PSA numbers. I tried to cut and paste it onto this blog, If that can be done, it requires computer skills I don’t have. Let me say though that it shows a heck of an ascent and a heck of a drop. If the graph line were a physical object, you could bore a hole through leather with it. 

     One more thing. My prostate is not putting out big PSA #s but what about the cancer that has moved to the bones and whereever else? I posed that question to the doctor and he said PSA does not work that way. Prostate cancer is a type of cancer that originates in the prostate but remains prostate cancer even when it has moved elsewhere. PSA is a protein that is a byproduct of active cancer making its inexorable advance. A reduction in PSA then is a marker of cancer going from active to inactive. If not dead then just camping, whether in the prostate or somewhere else.