Hi everyoneDiagnosed 2013 psa 63 prostate localized, all scans clear,
l did 8 weeks of radiation on to the prostrate bed and did adt therapy, after 2 years stopped adt and had a long holiday where nothing happened so watch and wait was the go to.
My psa starting climbing very slowly and then started doubling so
I was put on Adt again but l became Castrate Resistant to the drug after 1 year.
Next was Xtandi and it failed after 9 months, l also dabbled with Estradiol low dose patches which helped my well being, bones etc., I also had an orhciectomy.
l am now 72 and doing 10 rounds of doxcetaxal after Ct Scan showed cancer advanced to belly lymph nodes. Bone scan clear.
l just finished my second infusion, it's rough but hanging in there.
My question is has anyone out there done The Patch whilst doing Chemo and if so did it help in anyway re sside effects, fatigue or overall well being. l have used the patch before and had some benefit from it but stopped when told l had to do chemo guess l was afraid it might rock the boat.
Thanks for listening
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Knittingque
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I have recently been reading a lot about infrared heat and believe some articles said it can help with chemo side effects. There are infrared pads you can buy from many suppliers. We just ordered one from Hooga. Will report back once we’ve tried it. So check it out!
This is the only website that never lets me cut and paste links. I don’t know why so sorry about that. But there are articles from NIH and Cleveland Clinic that talk about this.
Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials (from Google search)
Hyperthermia: Why Heat Can Make Cancer Treatments More Potent
Combining heat with chemo or radiation can shrink tumors
Hyperthermia Cancer Treatment
Heat can be an incredibly simple, yet powerful, way to boost the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer.
More than 5,000 years ago, doctors in ancient Egypt used heat to treat cancer. Today, cancer experts have refined the delivery of heat — a technique called hyperthermia — to improve radiation and/or chemotherapy outcomes for:
Breast cancer.
Brain cancer.
Sarcoma (connective tissue cancer).
Prostate cancer.
Bladder cancer.
Cervical cancer.
Recurrent rectal cancer.
Bone metastases.
“Hyperthermia typically improves the effectiveness of radiation therapy by about 50 percent, compared with using radiation alone,” says radiation oncologist Jennifer Yu, MD, PhD.
“Rather than killing cancer cells outright, mild temperature hyperthermia ‘primes’ cancer cells to be more susceptible to radiation or chemotherapy. It can also target tumor cells that prove resistant to radiation and chemotherapy.”
How heat affects cancer
Hyperthermia is different from “ablative” techniques, which use heat — from ultrasound waves, radio waves or lasers — to destroy cancer cells.
“In those treatments, the heat itself is high enough to ‘cook’ the cancer,” explains Dr. Yu. “In mild temperature hyperthermia, we use lower temperatures (109˚ to 110˚ F) to allow radiation therapy or chemotherapy to work better. This often shrinks the tumor.”
Hyperthermia makes a few different things happen during cancer treatment:
It sensitizes cancer stem cells to radiation.
It interferes with tumor cells’ ability to repair damage from radiation.
It heightens the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs.
It increases blood flow to the tumor, making tumor cells more sensitive to radiation and improving delivery of chemotherapy to the tumor.
It enhances the body’s immune response to the cancer cells.
How hyperthermia works
Cancer experts use different methods to heat tumors before or after radiation therapy.
They may use small microwave units to heat tumors located near the body’s surface. They may place probes within a body cavity, such as the rectum, to heat a tumor. Or they may surgically place a probe to heat a tumor deep within the body — for example, in the brain.
Cancer specialists typically do hyperthermia treatments twice a week over the course of radiation therapy. Each treatment takes about one hour.
Heat can also be delivered in different ways with chemotherapy.
Doctors may heat the blood that supplies a tumor, then deliver chemotherapy through the heated blood.
Or surgeons may heat chemotherapy drugs and circulate them through the abdomen and pelvis to treat tumors located there. The technique — called hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) — is used to treat ovarian cancer metastases, for example.
Hyperthermia is typically done within about an hour of chemotherapy, except in HIPEC, where patients receive hyperthermia and chemotherapy at the same time.
What it feels like
The beauty of hyperthermia is that doesn’t harm normal cells and tissues. However, Dr. Yu’s patients often question whether hyperthermia might burn.
“Hyperthermia often feels like a heating pad. Most patients do not find it uncomfortable,” she says.
Wire thermometers are used so doctors can monitor temperatures and prevent overheating.
Yet even with this precaution, about 10 percent of hyperthermia patients develop temporary skin blisters. These typically heal quickly, she says.
What the research shows
In 2010, Duke University researchers found that adding hyperthermia to radiation treatment for breast cancer produced a 65 percent response rate, compared with a 42 percent rate for radiation alone.
“More recently, in a randomized clinical trial, researchers found that hyperthermia and radiation improved pain control for bone metastases, compared to radiation alone,” says Dr. Yu.
Researchers in her lab have also been exploring the potential of hyperthermia to treat cancer stem cells that promote the growth of brain tumors.
As time goes on, more and more studies will reveal the benefits of hyperthermia for those with cancer, Dr. Yu believes.
“Combining hyperthermia and radiation is a great treatment to consider if you have failed prior chemotherapy and radiation therapy,” she says.
I was diagnosed Nov 2013 Did 7 weeks Radiation in 2014 as well as ADT for two and a half years then psa dropped from 64 to 0.10 nadir so that would be end of 2016. Was monitored with watch and wait and psa started rising around 2020, back on ADT for 1 year then 2021 became Castrate Resistant, then on Xtandi for 14 months so we are now into 2023 and psa started doubling and cancer advanced to belly lymph nodes now doing Docetaxal going into #3 out of 10 infusions Dec 27th. I basically got 4 years free from any therapy, but alas the beast woke up.
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PSA raised rapidly after 2 months finishing chemo
Update: Experience with Estradiol patches for ADT
Am i catastrophizing over my results 
Estradiol patches and gynecomastia (man boobs)
