Finished 28 Proton Therapies

If you have Proton therapy first, and later in life you experience recurrence, what kind of treatments will be still available to you? Can you still do surgery, or go back to do Proton therapy again?

jc76

Thanks for the reply. I see some people underwent 30, 40 rounds of Proton treatment. Some only went with 5 rounds of treatment. Is this by choice or decided by their Radiation Oncologist in Cancer center according to their level of PCa?

@marlow2
This is standard procedure at UFPTI. When you do simulation (this procedure sets up a specialized bed for each patient and the parameters techs will use during actual treatments) e there they have you drink water 30 minutes prior to procedure. Then do low dose xray to monitor your bladder position with water and adjust drinking more up or down.

This is done to help move bladder away from prostrate and lesson the amount of radiation that bladder receives. They also look at Space/Oar to see it has moved the rectum down and away. If not they will use a baloon to do that before procedures.

Everyone is different and how they absorb water and time needed to do it, along with size of bladder ect. My plan revealed I needed to drink 12 oz of water 30 minutes prior to treatments.

Thus I would urinate prior to drinking the water and after treatment urinate again regardless of urged to do so as had a 45 minute drive home. This work out for me without any issues with urnination urges from drinking all the water and the increases in urnination and urges when doing radiation treatments.

Thanks for all the comments. My husband found out yesterday that the trial that he volunteered to do was set for him. 50% would have no water administered during radiation and 50% would have water administered. He is in the water category. I'm actually relieved because they don't know yet how patients will do without water which is the normal procedure. He also has an appointment for the Decipher test on 3-7-24. His paceror surgery was moved up to 2-29-24 and CT and MRI scans on 3-1-24. I hope that he gets relief from the shingles that he has had for 3 weeks. The bumps are drying up but he is still in a lot of pain.

@marlow2
My PCP at Mayo Jacksonville (who does a lot of research) stated he was seeing trials of the drinking of water. The research is trying to determine if this pre treatment required is worth the trouble with drinking water to move bladder away. So your post saying your husband is in a trial for just that is confirming my PCP is just outstanding and confirms his research.

Some post have been reporting that the high dose 5 day treatments were same side affects for the 30 dose and higher treatments. My PCP also discussed this with me showing the reserach he is finding is showing the high dose is showing increase in side affects and complications over the low dose long term They are doing studies and trials on this also.

The high dose 5 day is fairly new versus the decades of doing the low dose long term thus the research now will help determine which is better not only for curing the cancer but the amount of side affects and seriousness of them for better information patients. Again one improvement of 5 dose versus 30+ is the time required and I think a lot of men will not ignore and delay treatmens if they can get the high dose and done in 5 treatments. What I was told my oncologist/radiologist was that the radiation does not kill the cancer it damages the cells and prostrate cancer cells can't repair themselves like normal cells of prostrate. Do the cancer cells after treatments can't reproduce and grow so die off. That is why so important to treat entire prostrate to make sure all areas are treated and they don't miss a minute cancer. This again is my oncologist/radiologist at both UFPTI and Mayo Clinic not my personal opinion.

I have also seen the precise beam treatments versus treating entire prostrate and margins. What my UFPTI oncologist/radiologist said about this is there is no gurantee that any CT or MRI nor biopsies will not miss a small undetectable spot that does have cancer and will continue to be there if not treated. Thus UFPTI treats the entire prostrate to prevent this and until more research (UFPTI received a 25 million dollar federal grant to do research and trials on proton verus photon radiation treatments) and those a lot of research is being done.

Hope your husband feels better. I have never had shingles but am told is very painful. The Decipher test should really help you on better diagnoses of the risk level of his cancer.