@jeffmarc my shot was in my glute and i was EXTREMELY sore / painful after the shot - like a pain in my glute that i've never felt before. so sore that the first few days it was difficult to sit and that lasted for 4 or 5 days.

I was monitored monthly and my blood counts did go down slightly but not too bad. Honestly I had more long term side effects from Lupron than Oliparb. The biggest PARP side effect for me was my stomach and my digestive system. That is a known side effect that they said would get better in a few months and at almost the exact 2 month mark those digestive issues subsided.

I can say that I never felt great during those 6 months and I can't really say if it was from the Lupron or the Olaparib. It was def worth the short-term pain because the results were great. The trial was 6 months but my gut tells me if I was on it for another 3 months I would have been cancer free.

My post-surgery pathology showed only a very small amount of contained cancer , lymph nodes good, no positive margins so the trial was certainly helped. If I had just had surgery (no trial drugs), one surgeon said you have a VERY high likelihood of recurrence within 5 years given your genetics and gleason score. The idea behind treating the cancer before surgery actually comes from breast cancer and they have seen very good results. I found out from my UPenn docs (which is a BRCA center) that prostate cancer is at least a decade behind breast cancer research. They have found that a lot of similarities between the 2 cancers and are finding many of the BC therapies have application on PC.

It's also amazing how little knowledge most docs have about BRCA - My GP doc always thought my PSA was fine (3.5) and so did my urologist. It was only when it jumped to 5 within 4 months that my urologist suggested an MRI which found the cancer. What I found out after speaking with docs from UPenn is that 4 is NOT the limit for BRCA+ and a PSA over 1.5 should have put me in surveillance mode. My urologist and GP had no idea - I saw 6 docs for opinions when i was diagnosed with PC and only 1 doc (besides the docs at UPenn) knew anything about BRCA and the affects on PC.