I have been procrastinating about writing this, so I am just going to get it over with. We saw Phillip P on Wednesday 9th (about 8 days after my appointment with Pat B). Unfortunately the “gains” that Pat reported, in terms of a reduction in PSA score, have entirely been lost. The score that we got from Phillip was 6.5, which is back to where it had been before the radiation treatment.

Phillip made several points about this. (Sorry, I have forgotten how to do numbered lists in this infuriating blog editor.) First, he found the increase “not upsetting”, and he hoped we were not perturbed by it. Second, he understood also that people made a fetish (my word) of the PSA score. However, the metric that he is focused on is the doubling rate, i.e. the time interval in which the PSA score doubles. A doubling rate of 6-8 weeks would cause him concern, but he feels I am a long way off that. Third, 90% of his consultation time is spent reassuring patients and their carers about PSA scores. So he gets that people find these increases worrying. (He was at pains not to ridicule or downplay our concern.) But he would like us to look, not just at the quantum of the score, but at its rate of progression. Fourth, he has many other treatments up his sleeve.

As to when it comes time for me to move to the next treatment, as he has said previously, Phillip wants to keep me on Zolodex for as long as possible. Let’s call the its successor “Treatment 2”. Say Treatment 2 has an estimated efficacy of a year. If I go onto it now, I will get a year out of it. If I go onto it in six months, I will get eighteen months out of it. So that is why he wants to defer Treatment 2, and its heirs and successors, for as long as possible. (Phillip has said to me before quite bluntly, that the fewer treatments I have, the better.) Treatment 2 will be deployed at a rapid rise in my PSA. But we ain’t there yet.

I was due for another Zolodex implant after the consult with Phillip, which I had without incident. I will go on having these every three months until I move to another treatment. I will continue seeing Phillip every 6 weeks, and having a CT whole body scan every three months. (The next one of these is booked in for 12 July.) So I remain under close surveillance.

It took us a while to digest this news. On hearing it, and the rest of that day, we both felt a bit stunned. What made me feel better, actually, was doing some German homework. Everyone deals with adversity in their own way, and this is mine. We both felt more positive the next day, having had some time to get a better grip on the situation.

It was obviously disappointing that the radiation treatment didn’t have more effect. However, Phillip has many arrows left in his quiver, and we are confident that he will deploy these as the situation dictates. I am still feeling fine, exercising, doing stuff on the home front, and all the other things I have been doing. So there are a lot of positives to focus on — take it from me, we are doing just that! To this end, I would also like to maintain the moratorium on questions. I say this for two reasons. One, I just don’t have any more information to add to what I have written above. Two, I don’t want to give the situation more mental space than it already occupies; we don’t want to delve into it further.