Friday, March 9, 2018

March 9, 2018 - The Truckin' Man


Truckin’ Along

I just had my quarterly Lupron shot after my labs showed that my blood work is “totally normal” according to my oncologist.  Apparently the doctors are concerned about the liver numbers in particular.  I also finally had another ultrasensitive PSA test.  Scripps now send these out, so I got the results today—0.04.  This is one hundredth of a point higher than it was on 8/29/2017.  It is not something to worry about at this point, but I want to keep monitoring using this test instead of the less accurate test the lab used since 8/29.  That test cannot detect anything below 0.06.

I am continuing on my diet and the supplements.  I also continue to talk with my peers who have more ideas than there are supplements in the world about what we all should be taking.

My oncologist talked with my contact at CureMatch, the company that performs a complete analysis of a patient’s biopsy and history of prostate cancer and comes up with potentially preferred therapies, including clinical trials.  The problem is that I don’t have a biopsy and my cancer is sleeping right now.  Last year I had a test to see if there were cancer cells floating around in my blood (‘liquid biopsy”), but none were found.  All this says is that I have to see progression of my cancer before we can take this step with CureMatch.  I could go off of Lupron, but letting the cancer grow this way is problematic at best.  Some of my peers have chosen to do this, but I guess I am too conservative for this.  I’d love to get off of Lupron and its side effects, but I don’t want to run the risk of moving up my end date.  What I have to do is something else to deal with the lack of sex drive, the loss of muscle mass, and the neuropathy.  The obvious partial answer is exercise (yuck).

I am interested in Immunotherapy, but in order to have the doctors decide whether I may be a good candidate, they need to get the DNA of some active tumors, which I apparently don’t have.  Back to the Catch 22.  Besides, Immunotherapy has not been that successful due to the nature of prostate cancer in contrast to melanoma and other fast replicating cancers that make use of a particular mechanism that the body can be made to attack.

I don’t like being on hold, so-to-speak instead of truly attacking the cancer to kill it once and for all.  I’m trying (with some success) to starve it by taking away testosterone with a combination of supplements with some history of curtailing some cancers and hoping that cancer feeds on sugar—hence a low sugar diet.  It is just that statistics show that this approach will likely go the way of most diets—only temporary curtailing of the problem child.

In any case, I’m just reporting that all is good and I still have no significant symptoms that can be pointed directly at the cancer.

Again, thank you all for your incredible support.

Les, Truckin’ Man