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1st PSA test seven weeks after surgery
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Jul 25 3:06pm | Replies (44)Comment receiving replies
You really should ask your doctor to let you have something besides Firmagon. Many people start to have a lot of pain from getting that shot every month, And the doctors love the income from having a monthly shot.
You would get the exact same results from a three month Lupron shot, And it’s in the hip and doesn’t really hurt, I got them for six years.
Even better ask your doctor for Orgovyx, A once a day pill. If you do this, when you stop, your testosterone comes back much quicker.
Replies to "You really should ask your doctor to let you have something besides Firmagon. Many people start..."
I’ll have to ask my MO again, but I recall her saying that Firmagon would lower my PSA the fastest but that I could switch to orgovyx later on.
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As we've discussed before, though, Lupron triggers an initial testosterone surge, which is bad news if the cancer has already started spreading. It is possible to suppress the surge, but it still delays the time before Lupron can start lowering your testosterone level.
Ideally, in that situation, you'd get Orgovyx, which you mentioned, but it's crazy expensive in the U.S. and not all insurers will cover it.
Since I was on Firmagon for 2½ years before Orgovyx became available here, I'll confirm everything you wrote about swelling and discomfort around the injection site, and toss in 2–3 days of flu-like symptoms every month to boot. But if (like I did) you urgently need ADT that starts working right away, and your insurer won't cover Orgovyx (or it's not approved yet in your country, which was my case in Canada in 2021), then you don't have many other options.