History: my dad was diagnosed with PC after TURP procedure in September 2016. Gleason 4 + 3= 7. PSA 5.2. Tumor present in 10% of analized tissue.
Theraphy: Casodex monotheraphy 150 mg for 5 months. PSA dropped to 0.17. Doctor decided to reduce Casodex to 50mg. Even though PSA in January 2018 was 0.53 he decided that we should stay with this theraphy for another year.
I was not happy about he choosen theraphy, but we continued. There are several reasons for it: my father was happy with it, we live in a country with public only health system where patients have little saying and doctors are to be obeyed (cultural thing). Patients are not refered to oncologist till cancer is considered contained and patients over 74 years old are usually not referred to surgery.
Last month my father lost 4kg, his voice is becoming weaker for months. His PSA is now 0.6. Finally I had enough and we drove 4 hours to a privat clinic where they did a full body MRI. We got results today showing "suspicious hyperintensive signal on T6 in a lenght of 10mm." Other than that it seams ok, but I know this is not the most sensitive test. They suggested focused MR of spine to investigate further.
I can not ful myself that this is a benign finding as my dad is visually diclining. Obviously we will go to doctor and ask for immediate action.
I'm so hurt. I feel the system and myself have left my father down. I keept saying that treatment was not aggressive enough. With Gleason 4+3 we should have attacked more. I'm affraid what more detailed tests will show and how will my father tolerate more aggressive treatments. He is 76. I'm the only caregiver - only child and lost my mom due to pancreatic cancer. You can tell I hate PC word (PC is also used often as abbreviation for pancreatic cancer)! I think I will go nuts
Thank you for listening.