Discovery part II

This is where I start to learn just how bad things actually are.

The cystoscopy reveals that my urethra is contracted, which effects my urine flow. He measures it by having me urinate into a flowmeter which shows that my flow is around 25% of what it should be. The examination itself shows that I have the bladder of a 70 year old man. The muscles lining the wall of my bladder are very thick and over worked as a result of overuse and the strain involved in the action itself. At this stage I had been going almost every hour, 24/7, (sleep? HA!) for a couple of months. He gave me some meds that were supposed to help with the flow (their effect was minimal) and reminded me of how I would need to prep for the biopsy on December 30 and that he would see me on January 14 with the results.

Then the results of my P.S.A. test came in on December 4.

An average reading for a healthy male is between 1 and 3.5 nanograms per milliliter. If that number is anything over 6 it is considered to be concerning and warrant further testing. My result was 164! Needless to say, he was concerned. He immediately started pulling strings to have my biopsy rescheduled to the earliest possible date, which turned out to be December 16. This is where things started going south for me even faster.

I haven't talked about the pain too much up to this point, I have entry after entry in my diary describing it, I will try to sum it up here. It gave me suicidal thoughts on more than one occasion, mostly the sciatic pain. It was virtually uncontrollable, but, I was taking naproxen (an anti-inflammatory) which allowed me to have some nights where the pain was almost bearable but without it there would be no respite at all. In order to prevent excessive bleeding of my prostate from the biopsy I had to stop taking the naproxen for ten days prior to it. Naproxen is a blood thinner. Until this point I had been functioning as normally as I could as far as working and tending to my everyday responsibilities and social life. It wasn't easy, I never slept for more than two consecutive hours because of either the pain or the bathroom breaks, and that medication helped enough that I could be mobile, I walked with a limp, but I could walk. Going off the naproxen changed that. I was confined to my bed for a little over a week. I couldn't stand up straight and could not use my right leg at all. I had to use a chair like a walker whenever I had to go to the bathroom, which I was still doing just about every hour. The month of December was pretty much a living hell for me. My life essentially came to a stop. I have been off work since December 14/09.

On December 16 the biopsy is done and I get the results on December 24. Merry Christmas. Cancer is now confirmed. At this point he classifies me as having stage T2a prostate cancer, with a Gleason grade of 8, which is very high for stage T2, especially with a P.S.A count of 164. So, another round of tests, ct scan, bone scan, x-ray and more blood, to determine if the cancer is still confined to my prostate or if it has spread. Again, I credit him for his expediency in regards to getting these tests completed. Under normal circumstances it would have taken several weeks to get them done. He pulled some strings and had them all scheduled and completed over a four day period the following week.

On January 5 he informs me of the results and tells me that what I have is the most aggressive and highest risk prostate cancer that there is, my only option is hormone therapy.

This pretty much brings me to where I started with my second post on this blog. I've covered the story from the medical stand point as comprehensively as I could. I will probably start writing about how it has changed my life and where I plan, or hope, to go from here. Not that I think anyone really cares, just for my own therapeutic purposes.