I’ve already mentioned my prostate cancer follow-ups. Now, I want to bring you up to date with the latest follow-up.

I got a “blood form” last year so that I could arrange a new blood test. This needed to be in time for my next test which was scheduled for November 2022.

I had the blood test at the end of October but this time there was no phone call as it was arranged that I was considered suitable for remote monitoring. Because of the Covid-19 situation, I didn’t need to attend the hospital for my follow-ups.

Thankfully my PSA number has remained very low (0.06) this time so it looks as if the Consultants promise to cure me has actually come true. Just out of interest my number has been very low every time I have had a PSA test since finishing the radiotherapy treatment.

The actual numbers have been: <0.01, <0.01, 0.03, 0.09. 0.07 and this time it was 0.06. I am very grateful to everyone at the at the Christie Hospital and the staff of the Macmillan cancer centre. I have now been monitored by the Urology team at Leighton hospital since 2020

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Since I finished the treatment back in 2018, my follow-ups have taken place every 6 months. The most recent one was at the beginning of November this year (2020).

I got a “blood form” last year so that I could arrange a new blood test. This needed to be in time for my next appointment which was scheduled for the 9th November 2020.

I had the blood test at the end of October and took the phone call as arranged on the 9th. Because of the Covid-19 situation I didn’t need to attend the hospital for my follow-ups.

Thankfully my PSA number has remained very low (0.09) this time so it looks as if the Consultants promise to cure me has actually come true. Just out of interest my number has been very low every time I have had a PSA test since finishing the radiotherapy treatment.

The actual numbers have been: <0.01, <0.01, 0.03 and 0.09. and I am very grateful to everyone at the at the Christie Hospital and the staff of the Macmillan cancer centre. I have now been discharged into the care of the Urology team at Leighton hospital.

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The Christie hospital is based in Manchester and serves a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 26% of patients are referred from other parts of the country. We provide radiotherapy through one of the largest radiotherapy departments in the world; chemotherapy on site and through 10 other hospitals; highly specialist surgery for complex and rare cancer; and a wide range of support and diagnostic services. We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years. We run a large, high quality, dedicated clinical research environment where our patients can participate in complex and early phase clinical trials, with around 400 trials taking place at any one time.

The Christie Hospital welcomes donations. Charitable donations are vitally important in enabling The Christie charity continue its work in the battle against cancer.

Among the services delivered are:

Acute Oncology manage the unexpected care needs of patients with cancer, including emergency situations, acute complications and acutely unwell patients and

Brachytherapy , which is the oldest form of radiotherapy, but also one of the least known. In its most simple form, brachytherapy is bringing a radioactive source close to a tumour.

Chemotherapy means using medicines to treat cancer. There are lots of different chemotherapy medicines and we often give several medicines in combination to increase the effectiveness of treatment.

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All it involved was shoving a catheter into my bladder twice a day to ensure that I was draining the pee away fully. Nervously I started doing it at home with my long suffering wife by my side “in case I fainted”.

To make it worse it had to be measured each time and a record kept for my next visit to Urology.

However it soon became second nature and the visits to Urology were just part and parcel of the ongoing treatment which continued until around Christmas time when I stopped the morning one and was just continuing with the one before bedtime.

My first visit to Urology after Christmas was when I stopped the intermittent catheterisation altogether.

Since the I’ve had a roller-coaster of a time with my bladder but its getting better now after another 10 months of ups and downs.

Now as I write this in October 2019, it is becoming a distant memory and other things have been happening since stopped the intermittent catheterisation to cheer me up.

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All went well, or so I thought until a few days later when I had trouble peeing. So back I went to Urology, where I was told that I would need to have “intermittent catheterisation” which I must do my self every night and morning .

That was fine until the nurse showed me what I had to do, however it wasn’t as embarrassing as it sounds, standing there with my trousers around my ankles, but pleasant it wasn’t.

More to follow on this topic….

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The day after the injection my appointment at the Macmillan Cancer Centre was due, so I went along to it.

While I was there they sent me for a further blood test, despite my having had the hormone injection, so I presumed it wouldn’t count. Any way it did and I’m very pleased to say that the PSA number which had been as high as 4.05 actually read <0.01 WOW!!

My wife and I were in tears when the letter came through about 3 weeks after the bloods were taken.

Since then, I’ve obviously had no more hormone injections but I have had another blood test – actually when I thought I might have had a water infection. Thankfully there was no infection but the GP had ordered a blood test which included the PSA test and again got the reading of <0.01 which is basically undetectable WOW!

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Urologists, Specialist Nurse Practitioners and doctors all appeared, to try to sort out the catheter.   After being subjected to all sorts of poking and prodding, while they tried different ideas until it was sorted. WHAT A RELIEF that was!!

The New Catheter

When the first two or three attempts failed the brought in a Specialist Urologist from Manchester University Hospitals who initially failed and said that the answer may be a suprapubic catheter. This would have meant inserting it through my stomach wall in the operating theatre.

At the last moment he remembered another method where he would insert a 1.5 metre length of wire. This would then be used to guide the catheter.

THANK GOD IT WORKED.  The relief was immediate and I found out that I’d had almost 3 litres of urine in my bladder, which is a heck of a lot of liquid.

However, now its the 23 October as I write this and I still have the catheter inside me; its called an indwelling catheter.

Yesterday I learned that the catheter will be removed on Monday 12th November – almost 16 weeks from when it went in! Happy Days!

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My Treatment & The Pain

Apparently they thought there were blood clots blocking the drainage and they decided to “blast” them away.

So although there was saline drip already attached to the catheter tubes, a junior doctor came along to do it more vigorously with a syringe.  He filled it with saline from another source. That was then pumped into the catheter tube before attempting to suck it back out into the same syringe.

The first three or four times were painful…

After that every attempt was even worse. He must have continued for about 30 or more attempts to remove the blood clots and I was writhing in pain and screaming at him to stop.

He didn’t stop… Neither did he check whether I was OK!

After maybe an hour he realised that nothing was happening and left he ward I was on. Not a word to me. I had a very difficult and painful night and I’m sure nobody else in my ward got much sleep either.

As it turned out, I was sent for a scan on my bladder and kidneys next morning (Wednesday 1st August) and the Consultant who did the scan couldn’t see the catheter in my Bladder!!

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This was then followed by a planning appointment on 6th August for a CT scan to determine where to point the external beam, which will mean going to Christie’s every weekday for 15 days (weekdays only) over the three weeks which starts on Thursday 16th August , which is when I will have to go to Christie’s every day for 15 days (weekdays only) for external beam radiotherapy.

My Oncologist says he is aiming to cure me!! 

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I had some complications which meant I ended up staying in hospital for 8 nights!  I was admitted as an emergency after things went wrong with the catheterization.  This was even though the brachytherapy had gone well according to the Consultant Radiologist.

My Treatment Continued

I actually had the brachytherapy on Monday, but when the catheter came out after the procedure, I was unable to pass water, so it was replaced which gave me some relief. Temporarily as it turned out, as when that one was removed, I was unable to pass water again.

The complications arose when the catheter was again replaced but it was inserted  in the WRONG PLACE. This was discovered on Wednesday the 1st of August in the morning, after a night of sheer agony while they thought there were clots blocking the drain. The drain bag was full of blood, so they tried “irrigation” which meant a lot of pain for me. More on that later.

On the Wednesday morning I had a bladder and kidneys scan but the Consultant couldn’t see the catheter in my bladder. They quickly removed it out and sent for some more specialists; one from the Urology team and one from the Critical Care Unit ( which really bothered me). The Urology Registrar decided that I would probably have to go to theatre for a supra-pubic catheter, but first tried another method involving a 1.5 metre length of wire which was a massive relief when it worked and the water flowed again!

I thought I  would be kept in over the weekend as I  developed a chest infection and they wouldn’t let me go until the drain was running clear. There was also some concern about my kidneys following the irrigation issue. This will push the next stage back by at least a week, so the timeline may be affected.

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