I was diagnosed with low-grade, localized prostate cancer in 2012 and went on active surveillance. In 2016, I was prescribed Flomax (Tamsulosin). I continued taking Tamsulosin during my 9 years on active surveillance, throughout my 28 proton radiation treatments (19 April-28 May 2021), and then for one year following treatments.

Once I was confident that the proton radiation treatments were successful, I began to slowly wean myself off of the Tamsulosin.

What had been a pill a day for all those years, I wanted to closely monitor the effect of slowly reducing the dosage and monitoring the effect rather than stopping completely all at once. So, for a month, I reduce the dosage to 6 days/week. Experiencing no adverse issues, then reduced down to a pill 5 days/week for a month…. then down to a pill 4 days/week for a month….3 days/week for a month….2 days/week for a month….1 days/week for a month….and then none.

I still have a stash of Tamsulosin in my medicine cabinet (perhaps expired by now, I don’t know). But, by reducing the dosage slowly month-by-month, I could closely monitor any adverse effects related to the change. If at any point I had experienced a problem, I would’ve stopped the experiment and sought another option. So far, everything has worked well.