How long after Proton Therapy can I expect to be able to travel?

@robertov
I had 30 round of protons radiation treatments. You are correct (from feedback from my R/O and PCP) that the shorter treatment comes with sooner side effects and can be more prominent.

I was not give a restrictions on traveling. I did develop more urgency to urinate, more often, dribbling, etc. I develooped a way around this to go to restroom when I could versus waiting until urgency came.

I had mild fatique. It was not something that prevented me from exercising and I kept walking, swimming, etc.

We are all difererent in how we respond to radiation treatments. What I experience you may not or yours could be worse or other things bother you. You did not m mention if you are getting hormone treatments. I did not have hormone treatments. I have read on MCC those that did have significant side affects from it and then others mild.

I am sure others on MCC will respond to your post and you can get more experience from others. If I was you don't hesitate to talk to your R/O and/or urologist about your concerns. They have your medical history and can help you with answers to your questions.

I had 28 sessions of proton radiation during April-May 2021 (plus Eligard injections in April & July of that year). I had no restrictions of any type following treatments (except to show up for my July injection). I continued my daily weightlifting just as I had during treatments in order to continue mitigating the potential hormone therapy side-effects. Other than that, life-post radiation treatment went completely back to normal. I had no short-term side-effects since they didn’t overshoot my prostate and hit otherwise healthy nearby tissues and organs.

Dr. Rossi in his mid-year 2023 PCRI conference presentation does make some cautionary statements about post-proton SBRT possible side-effects. His full proton presentation is at https://www.youtube.com/live/WTqPnSRYtW4?feature=share
—> Starting at 3:38:45

The specific part about Proton SBRT starts at: 4:30:45.

I had 28 sessions of proton RT ending this past May 15. 5 days later I took a cross country flight from South Florida to Spokane, WA, was there for 5 days, saw a concert, did some hiking, led a normal life and flew home. During my treatment I had some urinary issues (difficulty peeing, especially at night) that FlowMax took care of pretty quickly. About half way through I started having some diarrhea, not all the time and not terrible, which resolved pretty quickly after the end of the treatment. This was my biggest worry about traveling, but turned out not to be an issue, I just made sure I went to the restroom whenever possible.

I had 7 1/2 weeks of radiation. There were no limits on where I could go or what I could do. I have the radiation in the morning and went to work for a full day in my Computer consulting business.

Radiation itself had no noticeable effect on anything I was doing.

Some people get fatigue some people get some urinary track issues, but they are minor and quickly resolved in almost every case.

Thanks JC, I always find your posts useful. I have been on Orgovyx for almost 9 months. Because of Gleason 8, they will want me to continue for another year, I think.
I’ve done fine on Orgovyx with mild fatigue mostly it. I will speak to the RO but want to do some planning and getting feedback from this forum has been helpful. I’m 73 and love to travel.

Thanks Jeff, getting a good picture which I didn’t have. I’ve handled the ADT well so a little more fatigue, I can handle. I try not to run around but stay and dig in.
I had done computer consulting for many years before retiring. Interesting that you do also.

I spent 50 years in Computers 25 programming the last 25 running a consulting business. I had 26 architect companies plus a whole bunch of others. When Windows 95 came out, Microsoft hired me to help run MSN. They gave me the hardware forum and I had so many people posting every day that they gave me the windows and Macintosh forums as well. I did that stuff at night and ran my consulting business during the day. I had been active on bulletin board forums before the Internet became big and knew people all over the world. A lot of them migrated over to MSN because I had been very helpful with technical issues on their computers for years. One good thing about having forums that are active is that you pull in other really knowledgeable technical people. I didn’t have to do it all, Just like here in the Mayo forum. Had a lot of people from Australia because it was free and they had to pay for everything else. Unfortunately, after a year they had to start paying again. It was cheaper than Compuserv.

I have spent 35 years in IT started in a one of the insurance companies and got my Masters in AI. with that I worked at the institute of system science in Singapore. Since then I came back in enterprise architecture for the state of North Carolina. which then translated to Ohio, worked as a chief architect, on multiple implementation of Medicaid. Don’t get me started on AI.
Brothers in more than area.

Interesting. I also worked for a big insurance company for 9 years. Lots of Cobol, But I started working on the IBM main frames and doing a lot of an assembler language programming. When something would go wrong in the computer room they would call me in. I’d sit down at the main console and figure out what program was failing, Had to read the hexadecimal lights. That was before they had monitors that could show what was happening just one console to manage the punch card programs being run., You’ve seen those panels with all the lights on them, That’s when I used to work on the IBM $6M 360s and 370s. I then worked with at a company in the early 80s where they gave me a 4800 modem and a 32 line terminal and I could reboot the test a $6 million server from home, testing operating system changes. They got a program called visicalc on the main frame And I created spreadsheets to work out my taxes. I even hired one of the IBM support guys from the insurance company to work for me on mainframes at the other company. My boss at that company was an MIT graduate. When they moved him up, they gave me his job, I didn’t have a college degree at the time, just lots of real experience and great writing skills.

Here’s a picture of the masthead from a $6 million Computer I keep in my home office.

@robertov
Your welcome! I think it is imporant to continue with things you like to do. Mental health is extremely important when going through cancer diagnoses and treatments.

Having and doing something you like to do is really going to help you with your journey.

I could not ride my bike prior to, during and right after my diagnosis and treament. I liked bike riding as was like being a kid again. I also loved doing water aerobics and was able to continued doing them which really helped. I did walk and swim during my treatments also and I think that helped with only having slight fatique.