How will prostate radiation affect quality of life?

[nuc1111]

Any information appreciated- how did it make you feel etc?

Thank w

[Tall_Allen]

I had some irritative symptoms (having to pee frequently and urgently) that lasted for 2 weeks. Then, a repeat of those symptoms a year later. Since then, no symptoms. In fact, peeing is better than ever - never get up at night to pee anymore.

Here's what you may experience:

prostatecancer.news/2018/10...

[TylexGP]

TA gave you a good link. I am only 6 months out from brachytherapy and 5 months out brom EBRT. During EBRT biggest issue towards the end was diarrhea. Which resolved quickly. Other then that pretty uneventful. We will see what the next 12-18 months brings. For me the ADT+Zytiga started kicking my butt at 6 months. I have good and bad days but still overall tolerable. I wish you well in this unrequested adventure.

[6357axbz]

I experienced a bit of constipation but nothing serious.

[Magnus1964]

Initially, you may feel tired. I worked through my 6 weeks of radiation. Years later you may have problems with urinary retention and need a TURP.

[fmenninger]

Some fatigue afterwards but focus on being active and working out with weights as it will be overcomed.

[Spyder54]

I just had 5 treatments of Image Guided SBRT/SABR of the prostate gland at Memorial Sloan Kettering by Dr Sean McBride. So far so good. Stampede Trial proved in Arm G (?) that Oligometastic aPCa (fewer than 9 Mets w fewer than 3 bone Mets that 81% were alive at 3 years!!! That is an awesome stat.Where u have it done is key. I would go to MSK or UCLA, or Mayo, or MD Anderson, Dana Farber, UCSF.

YouTube vids by Dr Scholz at PCRI give lots of good data on radiation. Make that part of your journey. Click on my icon for bio.

Best,

Mike

[fireandice123]

No fatigue issues. I had some relatively minor problems urinating which was dealt with by temporarily upping my Flomax dosage. Also, had some minor diarrhea which was dealt with some Citrucel. Everything was back to normal within 2 weeks of the RT ending. My urinary situation has improved since the RT. The only ongoing issue is I’ve had some very occasional and decreasing rectal bleeding. No pain just some bright red blood in the toilet paper. It’s apparently caused my some rectal scarring. It was occurring maybe once every 3 weeks but it’s decreasing in frequency. I don’t think it has occurred in the last 2 months. I had a colonoscopy about 6 months ago and nothing amiss was found.

[MMK-XFuture]

Had constipation for a few months, which were relieved by drinking prune juice, lots of water eating papaya. The daily walk helped, too. ~4+ years later started seeing blood in my urine. Urologist said may be radiation cystitis, bladder may have been impacted being close to the prostate. Drinking plenty of water and taking meds to stop the bleeding. So far, seem to be working.

[nuc1111 in reply to MMK-XFuture]

Than you-Ed

[spw1]

My husband had SBRT to the prostate. 5 sessions. No space oar used as the hospital had not had the training to use them last May. The week of the treatment was absolutely fine. The next two weeks were not good at all - to the point of us wondering why did we put him through it. Nobody had prescribed any pain relief and he needed serious medication for pain (internal and topical steroidal). Was no fun trying to arrange that in the middle of the night unexpectedly. He is okay now on that count. He still has to get up a few times at night. My advice would be to talk ahead of time and keep the pain med ready in case needed. We are hoping that the mothership was at least dealt with and is no longer sending out new mets. It was a risk as he has mets since diagnosis and we fear that at the moment a met outside is waking up causing a rise in the PSA despite being on Enzalutamide.

[EdinBmore]

Yes, good summary from TA. However, the article makes it all sound rather benign, la-tee-dah. My experience: up 6-8 times a night so rest/sleep was difficult; fatigue for me was overwhelming and I mean exhausted, bone crushing tired; ejaculate dries up but orgasm still possible; genital shrinkage (consider a penis pump) and ED meds; more frequent BM (as in, 6-8/day and urgent - this continues to this day, btw - but imodium helps); mood swings and emotional sadness/depression. Keep in mind that I was also on ADT at the time and that was a bad trip for me. So, may be difficult to separate out the cause and effect of the IMRT vs. ADT. I forced myself to exercise and it was helpful (doubt it did much for physical me but it helped with emotional me). But, radiation is relatively brief and is non-invasive but it IS life altering. Just saying.

EdinBaltimore

[maley2711 in reply to EdinBmore]

Many of those sound like ADT side effects!!!

[beachguy43 in reply to EdinBmore]

My experience was almost the same as Edin. Did not realize how bad the fatigue was until it slowly went away over a couple of years.

[maley2711]

The worst SEs would be if you are also having ADT for intermediate or high risk PCa?

[dixiedad]

For me , it was a non-event.Nada, zip, zed.

[nuc1111 in reply to dixiedad]

Thank you-Ed

[Deadstick]

I had EBRT/Brachytherapy about 10 years ago. I was in remission for about 4 years and now have BCR. I had adt with the radiation and it was almost intolerable. Now I'm on permanent adt with all of the side effects. I hope your outcome is better than mine.

The best to you.

[nuc1111 in reply to Deadstick]

Thank you-Ed

[dixiedad]

Now that I think about it, the hardest part was arriving at the clinic with a full bladder and an empty rectum at 11 AM 5 days a week.

[nuc1111 in reply to dixiedad]

Thank you-Ed

[BluesmanNick in reply to dixiedad]

So true. I'd forgotten about that aspect. 😳

[London441]

Your overall health and strength/fitness level are the biggest factors in tolerating it. This is true for the side effects of all treatments.

[Yank66]

Fatigue was definitely a factor at time of radiation. Bowel issues showed up later and continue to be problematic from time to time. Now, 8 years later, blood in urine. Urinary urgency has gotten worse in last few weeks. Dr. thinks radiation cystitis-scope next week

[nuc1111 in reply to Yank66]

Thank you-Ed

[john_in_pa]

About 3 months ago I completed 23 fractions of EBRT and one HDR Brachy boost. I had zero bowel side effects which I believe I owe to SpaceOAR. The only other side effect, which I'm still dealing with, is a moderate burning when urinating and some tenderness that I notice when I first seat down. Otherwise all is good. I had no added fatigue during treatment which I owe to daily intense exercising. Actually my baseline weak urine stream and urgency (from chronic BPH) improved significantly immediately after my Rad treatments and seems to be durable. ADT on the other hand has been tolerable but annoying... fatigue, hot flashes, minor cognitive issues and of course no libido! My treatments (triple play therapy) has not been as bad as I had anticipated. Other then the inconvenience of going to treatments and ADT side effects it has had minimal impact on my quality of life. I do believe that dedicated daily exercising (weight lifting and cardio) and a clean diet goes a long way in mitigating treatment side effects!

[nuc1111 in reply to john_in_pa]

Thank you-Ed

[dorke]

I did 25 cycles if IMRT to the prostate and whole pelvis.I also did spaceOAR gel to avoid any gastrointestinal side effects.

The hardest parts for me were to keep the urine during the sessions (had to drink 6 cups of water) and fatigue. I used to crash at about 9:30 PM every night.

As other mentioned, I did suffer for urinary urgency for about three months after completing the radiation.

There was a gym in the hospital so after the radiation i used to go there mainly for some aerobics since I learned from this forum that hypoxia is bad for RT.

I was scheduled for early morning so I could have as much as possible a normal life -kept on working all this time.

To sum it up, it wasnt bad for me.

Good luck

[nuc1111 in reply to dorke]

Thank you-Ed

[treedown]

44 cycles 80gy during the treatments I peed a lot at night, constipation toward end, nothing troublesome. 2 years later, nothing that I am aware of.

[Horse12888]

What you find here does not represent a random sample; the **reason** people are here is that have had issues with their treatment.

Having said that, the only thing I noticed was a bit of extra fatigue close to the end. I say "extra" because I was already on ADT, and I was severely fatigued going into RT.

I think the main problem facing sexually active men that their erectile function takes a hit.

[j-o-h-n]

Here I go again....I hear the trumpets blow again.....

Greetings: Radiation - I've posted this before so to those people who have already seen this please forgive me.

I had 8 weeks of salvage radiation to "the bed". 5 days a week (not weekends) for 8 weeks minus 1 day for a total of 39 sessions at MSKcc. The actual radiation was like getting an x-ray by my dentist. I never had any side effects during the whole 39 sessions. However, 2 years later my left urinary tract was "fried" as per my urologist (or from passing prior kidney stones he was not sure). So, I had to have a urinary stent placed up my urinary tract (through my willy which is really nothing - sounds terrible but it's nothing) to aid in passing my urine (which was never a problem anyway). So I had stents in and out every three months for many years and now I'm stent free, However today 15% of urine from left kidney and 85% from right kidney, but not a problem. So make sure you get a good radiologist. Also, I don't know if this would apply to you but guys here recommend SPACEOAR HYDROGEL to be inserted for protection of parts of your body. Make sure you ask your R.O. about the spaceoar and make sure you ask here on this forum before getting fried.

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Wednesday 02/09/2022 6:15 PM EST

[nuc1111]

Thank you-Ed

[cancerfox]

I had 25 sessions of Cyberknife SBRT radiation treatments of about 30 minutes each last March - April. I was told by the oncologist that I might feel tired by the end of the week, but since I was already in androgren deprivation therapy (ADT) with Eligard, I was already losing strength and energy and didn't notice much additional loss from the radiation. I did experience increased urgency for bladder and bowel movements, though, which was later exasperated by brachytherapy with 100 radioactive seeds being planted in May, and I am still to this day dealing with this problem. I am still getting up a couple of times a night to pee, even though I take tamsulosin, and when the urge to go occurs it is very persistent. The worst part of the Cyberknife treatments was having to lie perfectly still while retaining at least 24 oz water for the 30 minutes, which often stretched to 45 to 60 minutes because my bladder was spasming, my stomach was twitching, or something was blocking the view of the real-time imaging guidance, and the technicians had to keep repositioning me or worse, sending me to the restroom a couple of times to try and force a bowel movement. In fact, I had originally thought I would just do 44 sessions of SBRT and no brachytherapy, but toward the end of the 25 SBRT sessions I had had enough and opted for a one morning outpatient brachytherapy surgery instead of another 19 SBRT sessions. Like the Talking Heads sing in their Life During Wartime song, "this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around." 😐

[Ranger2019]

I did imrt with lots of radiation, irritation and frequent urinating halfway thru to end. Maybe total of 2 weeks. No spaceaor and I have uc, no uc flair ups or irritation.

[lokibear0803]

Moderate-to-severe fatigue and nausea during 6 weeks of treatment, with depression likely b/c of those things; constipation didn’t help either. Things got better very quickly as soon as treatment ended. GI problems returned about a year later, and it took me quite a while (about another 1-2 years) to figure out the right dietary + supplements protocol to get things on track.

In retrospect, it was worth it. I’ve had pretty good local control since the radiation ended; recent scans show hardly any mets are left. Sadly, these things change with time.

[lokibear0803 in reply to lokibear0803]

I should add that the radiation I described above was my 2nd round, to pelvic region with some overlap onto GI tract, and this is different from “prostate radiation” that you’re talking about. So my experience may have not that much relevance to what yours will be.

However, my 1st round of radiation in 2006 was EBRT + Brachy in prostate only, so this is similar to yours. It was a long time ago, and I don’t recall many problems like I did with my 2nd round. At one point, I had trouble urinating and one doctor suggested a catheter. I recall declining and, luckily, my urinary function returned just fine. These days, it’s as strong as it’s ever been.

My lifestyle includes plant-based + fish diet, low calorie + nutrient dense, and plenty of cardio and strength work. These types of things, in my experience, can only help during the before/during/after time frames of radiation treatment.