29 Month Post Treatment PSA

Paul had a PSA test on 11/3/09. The urologist had wanted to put him on an annual PSA cycle in June but he needed a fresh test to report to a government agency for a license he has.

His 29 month PSA was 0.2 ng/ml, down from the 6/1/09 reading of 0.3 ng/ml. Still heading in the right direction!

We're very grateful that he was able to have proton radiation treatment in 2007.

Two Years - still going down!

Paul's two year post proton treatment PSA was taken on 6/1/2009. To our delight, the PSA is still on the decline -- 0.3 ng/mL.

This is, by definition, a new nadir. We are very thrilled!

16 Month post proton PSA - still heading in the right direction

Paul had his 16 month post proton PSA test on 9/24/08. The result is 0.4 ng/ml, down 50% from the March 2008 reading of 0.8.

Needless to say, we're very happy about this. I'm especially pleased as I've read at least one study that cites a nadir of less than 0.5 ng/ml as being predictive of better long term patient outcome.

Here is the Loma Linda study I cite:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9788407

Carol

10 Month Post Treatment PSA

Paul's 10 month post proton treatment PSA, taken on 3/25/2008, was 0.8 ng/ml. This is down 33% from the September 2007 reading of 1.2.

We're very happy about this result but we know that we will always need to be vigilant about monitoring this situation.

Four Month PSA

Paul had his first post proton treatment PSA blood test on 9/26.The reading was 1.2, which is less than half of what it was pre-treatment. His last proton treatment was on 5/31/07, so the 9/26 test was five days short of the four month mark.

The Loma Linda radiation oncologist had said to expect the four month PSA to be in the 1.5-2.0 range, given that Paul's highest pre-treatment PSA was 3.5. A little lower is certainly better!

The next test is in six months. That is Loma Linda's protocol -- first test at four months post treatment and then every six months thereafter, for the first five years.

. . . Life Goes On

Some of you have asked about “next steps” in Paul’s prostate cancer treatment. There are no more treatment “next steps”, per se. The next scheduled milestone will be a PSA blood test at the four month post-treatment mark. This will be in late September. After that, PSA tests are done every six months for five years and annually after that.

Paul is doing well and has been tapering off Flomax. Again, the side effects have been minimal to date, for which we are grateful.

Life goes on.

Home Sweet Home

Treatment 42 was completed uneventfully this morning. Thankfully, gantry 1 was up and running, at least through Paul's treatment (I did call them at 6 AM just to check). Everyone in the waiting room applauded as Paul entered after the treatment. If you know Paul at all, you know how he hates attention. He looked as if he wanted to crawl under a rock :-).

We arrived home this afternoon and are looking forward to sleeping in our own bed after two long months.

Again, thanks for all your support. It has meant more than I can say to both of us.