Has RT Failed

Hi Roy,

Good idea to swap notes. I intend/ed to start another thread but in the meantime, I'll just start by mentioning my MRI.

The machine looked very state-of-the-art compared with our local hospital's. The scanning centre at MV is actually a charity founded by a doctor wishing to increase the availability of diagnostics.

The radiography staff were all very pleasant.

There was no requirement for a water intake.

As you will know, there are occasions when you are required to fill your lungs and then hold your breath (in contrast to my PET/MRs where I was required to empty my lungs and hold my breath which never seemed logical and  also more difficult to me as it seems natural to fill up first)

The radiographer indicated that this part was over. This led to some confusion later when I heard;

"....... thresholds .."

(me) "Sorry, could you repeat that?"

"....... thresholds .."

(me) "I'm sorry but I don't understand"

She re-phrased and I then understood perfectly.

It turned out that the radiographer was preparing me for more BREATHHOLDS,  a word that if it even exists, was totally unknown to me.

Unnecessarily, a new radiographer took over the voice communication.

Result was that I was  embarrassed  that I had to ask for a couple of repeats, and that probably the radiographer was left with the impression that I was some deaf old coot with comprehension problems.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out at my consultation with the oncologist an hour later the scan results were ready and that SABR treatment could now go ahead.

I was then put in for a planning CT scan in another department. Two cups of water followed by a contrasting agent inserted by cannula.

 The staff again were very pleasant but the account of that scanning experience is best left for another time although the moral would be: Don't have a CT scan at short notice late on a Friday afternoon.

Dave

This time next week it will be all over, just hope it works. Will post an update when completed.

Roy

They prefer for the PSA to be between 1 and 2 although it can be done with a lower figure, so I don't think at 0.1 it would show up anything.

The PSMA scan is more sensitive than the Choline and will pick up spread at a lower level, but I think as I have said with such a low figure it wouldn't be helpful.

I will be posting later which may clarify this, as more spread has been found in my case which didn't show up on the Choline PET/CT scan.

All the best

Roy

Hi Guys

I thought i would just update you on my journey. I have now finished the SABR treatment at Birmingham QE and am awaiting the follow up on 17th December which i believe is probably just a meeting with my Oncologist and the trial team to discuss how the treatment went and what side effects i may have had, which i must say have not manifested themselves up to now, but is early days, this i am told will enable them if successful, to request additional funding from the Government to carry out more of this type of treatment.

On day one which was the trial run, i was informed i would be having a meeting with my Oncologist prior to the dummy run which i thought was just routine, but he wanted to inform me that the detailed scan i had to plan the treatment, had picked up further spread in my pelvic bone, but this time on the left side which was very small at 5mm and didn’t show up on the normal Choline PET/CT scan, this was due to the fact that the CT Scan is taken at 3mm intervals and with it being only 5mm in size possibly only appeared on one frame and was missed, but the HD MRi scan which took an hour just for the pelvis, takes scans every 1mm so showed up clearly, so bad news but also good that it was picked up or the zapping would have been in vain. I was told that if the RT machine couldn’t pick the further spread treatment would not go ahead so my mind went into overdrive to try to formulate a plan if the scan was negative, but thank god it was visible and the dummy run went ahead as planned. Due to the additional spread the treatment time was doubled to 40min which comprised of the machine scanning me several times prior to zapping and then repeating it for the additional spread. Even though the treatment was 40min long i found it relaxing and had to fight off the urge to have a nap as i had to keep still, and the bonus of not having to fill my bladder to bursting,plus the benefit of not being encased in the tunnel made it quite uneventful.

Over the 3 days everything went to plan and apart from the long 140 mile round trip everything went well, i only hope they hit the bulls eye.

One last point is that after my meeting with the Onco i requested a PSA test so i could use it as a baseline and although he said that it wasn’t necessary he agreed, and the result was that it had reduced down to 0.63 so the Bicalalumide is having the desired effect.

Roy

As far as I am aware there will be another scan in the future, but what the timescale is I don't know. The reason I asked for the PSA test was as you say, HT will possible mask the true results, therefore my logic is to stay on the hormones until hopefully the PSA returns a figure of undetectable and then to come off them to see if it is the hormones or the RT causing the figure returned. My theory is that the hormones will keep the cancer at bay if the RT failed and if the RT has been successful then the only negative will be the side effects of the hormones.

Thanks

Roy

My PSA taken yesterday was 0.47 down from 0.63 last month with hormones in the mix so a way to go yet.

Roy

Hi Roy,

Encouraging PSA result but with two pronged attack. Without HT next PSA may not show such a marked reduction but hopefully will still fall.