It's been a while since the last entry. If I am calculating correctly, I have missed three reports of my PSA remaining at a level too low to be detectable. It has indeed been regularly too low to be detectable and yesterday I again had the PSA checked and again it remains too low to be detectable. This is a cancer blog with no cancer to talk about. I was first diagnosed, I was told I had three to five years to live. I am now in that window of death as I like to call it. Come November, I will be over the five years mar I continue to be treated for cancer, receiving a shot every three months that turns off my testosterone and a daily oral medication that is to serve as a backup for the shot (the shot is called Lupron). The most noteworthy feature of the daily medication is that it costs $17,000 something per month. I have made uneasy peace with that exorbitance, which I worked through in some earlier blogs. I still believe ...
I again had my PSA checked yesterday and again it is too low to be detectable. My diagnosis of an aggressive form of Stage 4 Prostate cancer is coming up on five years. November 2020, I believe. I'm not much for noting anniversaries but this is a big one since my Oncologist told me I had 3-5 years to live. No qualifiers or expressions of uncertainty. It prompted a poem about death coming for me as a ship coming into port. "The Good Ship Mortality". I expressed a grim acceptance. Perhaps once I have passed the 5 year mark I will find it and reprint it. I will call myself a "Dead man walking." Don't know that that is an appropriate use of the phrase (It's for someone headed toward the electric chair, isn't it?) but I'll do it anyway. Has a nice ring. My Oncology PA expressed astonishment that my energy level and mood remain good. I think it helped that I didn't know that that was what I could expect as a s...
My three month cancer checkup was this week and again, my PSA was too low to be detectable. Monotonously good news which certainly beats interesting bad news. I quizzed the oncology lady about a couple of things. One is that numbers associated with red blood cell count have been consistently low over the years. She has characterized them as "stable". I asked her if stable might also be "chronic" as in something permanently bad. A blood disease like leukemia I suppose. She assured me that if something like that were going on, other numbers would give an indication that something was wrong and that that was not happening. She said that the low red blood count numbers were not surprising, given the fact that my testosterone has been turned off. And besides, they weren't that low. I also asked what would happen if I were to go off the treatment program. After all, I have had nary a whiff of active prostate cancer for a ...
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