Answers from the doctor visit

A bit delayed on this post, mainly... check that... entirely due to a migraine that took me out and stomped all over me. But things are better now, and the relief from the pain is SO goooooooood.

So... I posed a few questions to my radiation oncologist when I saw him this week. Some of them were rather obvious, from his point of view, but they helped clear things up for me.  At any rate here are the questions,

1. Q. What tells us we've succeeded in this venture to knock out the cancer?
   A. PSA tests. Ideally, PSA should be at a zero level (0.something) but we don't start running other tests and scans until the PSA level bumps over 1 or 2.  There are too many false positives and in the past we did other tests and biopsies which didn't lead to anything.  So, we wait until it bumps over 1 or 2 and then we start looking.
2. Q. What follow-up routine will we set up?
   A. We'll set up a series of PSA tests every 6 months for the next 5 years, and we'll be giving you a stack of test forms for the lab with dates on them... so we'll have all that at the end of the treatment.
3. Q. About the hormone therapy, why does the Trelstar LA continue so far beyond where I'll be taking the bicalutamide?
   A. Essentially, continuing the Trelstar LA (an LH-RH agonist) keeps the pituitary gland trying to signal the testicles and adrenal glands to product testosterone. But because we've already depleted that hormone no testosterone production happens.  So, we want to keep testosterone production at zero for a year. After that, we let it run... and testosterone production may take as long as a year to start up again (if it starts... sometimes it doesn't).

Those were the main questions I had.  There are some more that came to mind... but those I'll put on the next page.