Prostate cancer G9 local lymph node positive. Pos margin.

Hi, I was doing estrogen patch therapy and it dropped my T down to zero. And my PSAs remained at zero. I did this for 5 months but stopped because of the side effects (felt great mentally but no libido and strength loss to the point that I wondered how long I could keep pursuing therapies). So I started casodex/dutasteride (150mg caso a day and 0.5mg duta). Libido is better than zero but still very very low. Strength loss seems to have reversed but perhaps too early to tell (I've been on this combo for 13 days).

What I am thinking of is a rotation of:

Caso/Duta

Estrogen

Supraphsyiological levels of testosterone.

Perhaps 2 months of each one? Benefit is that I'd have good or at least decent libido a third of the time. But I don't want to sacrifice health for libido so first I wanted to get opinions. And it is early but if the caso/duta continues acting like it does now then I can stay on it indefinitely. I'll monitor my PSA and perhaps my CEA and if there is a concern I can switch back to estrogen therapy.

[Tall_Allen]

Why do you think that casodex will have a different effect on libido than estrogen? I wouldn't take testosterone with prostate cancer outside of a clinical trial. If you use Casodex intermittently you will have plenty of testosterone to fill your vacation periods. Be sure to take tamoxen with either Casodex or estrogen.

[Hidden in reply to Tall_Allen]

I'm hoping that casodex gives me a little libido. So far it has but it's only been two weeks. If it blocks the ARs it doesn't seem like it would give me libido but perhaps it's not 100% effective.

I take Tamoxifen

. I wasn't taking it when I started estrogen therapy and the gyno was bad. I started Tam and my boobs are no longer bigger than my wife's

[GP24 in reply to Hidden]

Casodex lowers the libido too. However, you will avoid hot flushes and bone loss.

[Hidden in reply to GP24]

Yup. But so far on the casodex my libido is very low but it is nonzero. On estrogen it was zero. I told my wife that once a month is better than never