I'm new here to the community although my wife (MeliaQuinn) has been actively asking questions and reading me numerous posts over the past two years. I was diagnosed in May of 2017 already stage 4 with bone metastases that lit up like a Christmas tree (no soft tissues other than the prostate itself and a few local lymph nodes which are no longer infected). At the time my doctor encouraged me that, although he would not have said it five years prior, he honestly believed that if we could keep me alive for ten years then he thought we would have a cure, or at least what would keep me alive from the cancer for the rest of a long life. Further, he said he also now had confidence that we could probably keep me alive for those 10 years to get to that promised land. This perspective really helped me. My oncologist was a little more skeptical on a "cure" but did say that if we could keep hitting the monster whack-a-mole every time it evolved we could have that long life that I wanted. So here I am more or less confident although I do think the main challenge is going to be keeping me alive for the hypothetically-relevant 10 years. My cancer seems to be a bit on the aggressive side.
So my first decision was to go ahead with a 6-month Lupron shot in order to put off the bigger decision to get the orchiectomy although I new I would take that route. Whatever the extra Lupron side effects were, beyond the obvious hot flashes, I did not want with my anticipated long life. I did not want 90 Lupron shots and associated problems over the next 40 years. Besides the orchiectomy that I got just prior to the Lupron wearing off, I went on Zytiga and went back to a normal life with no side effects except for hot flashes, but then went castrate resistant in just 12 months. Tried to radiate the resistant population in my L1 vertebra but then its clones sprang up multiple other places. So I went on Docetaxel chemo for 8 cycles each three weeks apart and again went back to an almost normal life, well tolerated, but after 6 cycles a population in my left illium went rouge. We zapped that with radiation and resumed the somewhat normal life but then two months later things started firing off in my shoulder, cranium, followed by hips, top of femurs, all original places but painful. I then started waiting to get on a trial and waited and waited ending up in a wheel chair only to find out the day treatment was supposed to start that I had been disqualified for some "treatment history" reason, surprising as they must have spent $30,000 on me doing all sorts of scans and blood tests.
I then immediately went back on Docetaxel and it (along with inflammation-reducing dexamethasone) got me back to near normal. During the trial-waiting period my PSA had climbed from 1.0 after chemo to 115 and after the new chemo it dropped to 60. Three weeks and another chemo later it dropped to 48, and I will test it again before my next chemo scheduled for this Friday. Problem is pain comes back within two weeks only to be saved briefly by the chemo. So old Moldy Bones here needs a new plan soon.
Bone marrow metastases
Lytic bone metastases?
Radiation for Bone Metastases
What’s on the horizon for treating bone metastases?
Advanced Prostate Cancer Bone METASTASES 
