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← Return to prostate cancer ADT injection
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Prostate Cancer | Last Active: 9 minutes ago | Replies (14)
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@northoftheborder Good choice.
Regarding the testosterone surge (especially with a tumor near your spine), this testosterone spike can be prevented by starting with Bicalutimide (Casodex) a short period of time before starting ADT, which blocks T from attaching to prostate cancer cells, reducing the risk of tumor (testosterone) flare when hormone therapy is started.
Tumor flare does not last long and will go away as the T level continues to drop.
https://www.oncolink.org/cancers/prostate/treatments/tumor-flare-in-prostate-cancer
Also, some these days start with Orgovyx (to prevent testosterone flare), then once testosterone is suppressed switch to one of the others (Lupron, Eligard, etc.).
Replies to "@northoftheborder Good choice. Regarding the testosterone surge (especially with a tumor near your spine), this testosterone..."
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@brianjarvis When I got my first of two 6 month shots of Lupron neither my urologist or RO mentioned anything about a testosterone flare. So when I came home to my wife after the shot and said something like, "Well, I just got my death by lethal injection shot. Wonder how long before I start feeling all the bad side effects."
And lo and behold, over the next few days my lifts went up and my desire for sex went up too! I was thinking that ADT isn't going to be bad at all. Maybe they gave me the wrong thing? Of course, as I dug into what was happening I did read about the testosterone flare and the testosterone boost did go away and my strength and libido started to drop as well.
But thinking back on the situation, would I have rather had some Casodex to eliminate the flare before the shot? Not really, the flare was fun! And I had a whole year of ADT to go so the little two week delay on the testosterone drop didn't really matter.
What ended up mattering was the long testosterone recovery after Lupron was supposed to expire. I thought it might take a month or two, but it was about 5 months before testosterone recovered to a normal level. I would highly recommend that a man use orgovyx instead for ADT so as to enjoy a much quicker testosterone recovery.