Doubling down on cancer

dakotarunner
dakotarunner Member Posts: 102 Member
edited April 2019 in Prostate Cancer #1

My first session with cancer was with prostate cancer surery in 2004. Numbers were good for a long time, but last Nov (2018) PSA was 10, chcked again in February and it was 15. OK, so that is the good part. I did not have time to worry about PC, because on February 8th, I had the Whipple procedure done for pancreatic cancer. Pretty ugly surgery, with long recovery time required before a guy gets to a "new normal".  I go see the oncologist April 10, to see about chemo. I think the PC mayhave to take a back seat to the pancreatic cancer, but will inquire about the PC. Has anybody been so lucky as for this to have happened to them. Thanks to everyone on this site. 

Comments

  • Georges Calvez
    Georges Calvez Member Posts: 547 Member
    #2
    Doubling time

    Hi there,

    Those numbers give you a PSA doubling time of roughly six months, if you take the PSA doubling time as a measure of the size and activity of the cancer then that means it is twice the size every six months.
    Ten is cause for concern, fifteen is worrying and the speed of change is even more so.
    Looking at your profile I see that you had a prostatectomy in 2004 with a staging of 4+3 so I suspect that you have a local recurrence

    Best wishes,

    Georges

  • eonore
    eonore Member Posts: 185 Member
    #3
    Hi,

    Hi,

    I just did a quick read on the Whipple procedure and I hope your recovery is going well from this difficult procedure.  What was your PSA on the draw prior to the 10?  I hope you are at a top notch hospital with a good team in place to manage your very complex case.

     

    Eric

     

  • VascodaGama
    VascodaGama Member Posts: 3,701 Member
    edited April 2019 #4
    Is it an Adenocarcinoma?

    Hi Runner,

    I saw before some of your old posts but couldn't find any for the lacking capabilities in this forum's search engine. I wanted to know more details about your story. In any case, you are a veteran PCa survivor of 14 years and that is pretty awesome. Congratulations.
    In your profile you describe that you did surgery in 2004 and saw recurrence in 2010 with an increasing PSA value reaching 0.4. I wonder if you did any other treatment since 2010 or just keep quite till today. In other words, has the PSA grown freely to the value of 10.0 ng/ml, in the past 8 years?

    I am sorry for this newer adventure of yours with pancreatic cancer. I hope you fully recuperate and get fit to go for more runnings on the tracks. You must be already in your 70th so that one can expect some other health issues to occur. You need to be more careful with treatment choices this time.
    You do not specify above the reason for the chemotherapy but if that relates to the pancreatic case then you can investigate if such could be done using Taxanes. The fact is that some pancreatic cancer responds to the same treatment as the ones done for prostate cancer. A friend of mine had pancreatic cancer (adenocarcinoma type) in 2018 and did chemotherapy using Taxanes. Though the pancreatic cells are different from prostatic cells, these mucus epithelial cells are tackled with the same chemo drugs. Surely each case is unique and treated accordingly. Discuss the matter in your next consultation with the oncologist.  

    Here is a link on Adenocarcinomas;

    https://www.cancercenter.com/adenocarcinoma

    Best wishes and luck in this journey.

    VGama

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