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Salvage Radiation Therapy with or without ADT added?
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: May 29 7:37pm | Replies (49)Comment receiving replies
@brianjarvis
Thank you for you response. I did get a PSMA scan 2 months before my RALP procedure and it only showed the lesion in my prostate at the time, nothing else.
My Doctor explained that the purpose of this last PSMA scan was just to rule out the possibility of anything showing beyond the prostate area., which would change the Radiology plan.
I see your point of ADT being an apparent benefit for my case. I agree that ADT is supposed to help me but my understanding is that it can also hurt me, which is what I would want to avoid, to the extent that it is reasonably possible.
I was not aware of this ArteraAI prostate biomarker test, but I will look into it. Thank you.
Were your radiation treatments your primary treatment or were these to treat a biochemical recurrence? Were you able to fully recover from these or not completely?
Your comment on the ADT side-effects being easy to minimize are certainly encouraging. Thank you for the helpful links on the benefits of exercising, I will check them thoroughly.
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@animate That’s good that you previously had a PSMA PET scan that showed something; that means that you (probably) aren’t one of the ~15% that are PSMA-negative. (It’s “probably” because even within one person, some prostate cancers can be PSMA-positive, and some not.)
Yes, the results of a PSMA PET scan can impact how treatment is managed.
As for ADT helping or hurting you, isn’t that the way it is with every aspect of prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment? Everything seems to hurt and/or help. But, prostate cancer is a bad-ass disease, and you have to hit it appropriately the first time - not too soft or it’ll come back; not to hard or you risk serious side-effects (that might even be worse than the cancer itself). Finding that “Goldilocks zone” is the goal. For me, ADT fit into that “Goldilocks zone.
My proton radiation treatments (April-May 2021) were my primary treatments. Prior to that, I was on active surveillance for about 9 years. So, I had plenty of time to look into all treatments and pick the one that fit my priorities the best.
There really wasn’t much to recover from the treatments. My wife later told me that if she hadn’t known I was undergoing radiation treatments, she wouldn’t have realized it from any change in me. And the short amount of time that I was gone each day for treatment were no different than any other time when I simply left to go shopping or to the gym.
I had minimal side-effects from the ADT due to the low testosterone - just mild “warm” flashes, significant muscle atrophy (w/about a 30% loss of strength), and my libido went to zero (but, never had ED). When testosterone returned, all those side-effects subsided.