So they sent me for a PET scan, to see if the cancer had spread. It hadn't. Nice.
A PET scan is kind of like an MRI, but first they inject a die that gets absorbed by cancer tumors. A radioactive die. It came encased in a big lead shield. I thought they're going to inject that into me? Yup.
I also got the first of the hormone injections. It wasn't bad, and the only real side effects have been fatigue. The Lupron starts at the end of the month; that's where I expect side effects.
They're scheduling a spacer, which is a gel injected next to the prostate. It will let them be more accurate with the Death Ray beam, keeping it focused on the lesions and not zapping parts of me I want to keep. Radiation will be every day starting in 2 or 3 weeks and will go probably until the end of the year.
All in all, not as fun as a barrel of monkeys but not so bad so far.
3 comments:
Wishing you all the best.
Good luck! I work in the radiation side - a pretty big part of our practice are guys like you getting prostate radiation. Serious good news- if you have to have prostate cancer, never before in human history have the odds been so much in your favor. Radiation therapy tech has advanced 1-2 generations from where it was when I entered the field in the 1990s, the radiation should be even more effective than before and much less toxic than before. When they start your radiation treatments, they'll probably coach you to drink lots and lots of water each day before your treatment, a very full bladder pushes things around such that it reduces radiation received by other organs. It's inconvenient but if you can get in the rythmn of that your treatments will go as quickly and smoothly as possible. (It's not unusual to put a patient on the table for radiation treatment, take some x-ray images and have to take them down again and have them drink yet more water because the guy hasn't filled his bladder full enough. It's not a fast process).
Hope your treatments go well and you can look forward to "ringing the bell" when you finish the treatments!
PET scans... When the tech says for you to stay away from children and pregnant women for eight hours because of your radiation level, take heed! I had one of those done last year. Just for grins, I measured myself with my Geiger counter. A normal reading is around 25 counts, max. I was reading over 1000 counts, and that was SIX HOURS AFTER THE SCAN!
God bless you on your treatment, Old Man!
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