August 24th was a day that made me nervous. I had appointments with both my oncologist and the radiation physician. Radiation was something I went through 6 years ago for my prostate so I was familiar with what that involved. What I was more nervous about was my oncologist visit. He would be managing my stage 4 cancer going forward.

Dr Kamradt (the oncologist) is a really nice guy. He explained that I would now be taking a more powerful hormone called XTANDI. I'd be taking this orally in conjunction with Lupron which is an injection every 6 months. I'll be meeting with Dr Kamradt every 6 weeks; prior to that I'll be having a blood test to monitor my PSA and testosterone levels.  He ordered a blood test that day and my PSA was 19. The idea is to get it down to 0.

XTANDI is unbelievably expensive. He had the pharmacist submit our case to the Patient Advocate Foundation and we qualified for a much lower cost.

I guess you have to be careful about what you ask for. I asked him what the expected survival is for somebody who had what I have. He told me three years, but he thinks that because I'm younger and in fairly decent health, that I should be able to be on the outer range of that average. That is a sobering thought.

Angie & I also met the radiation doctor, Dr Boyd, who explained the treatment regimen. It'll only be two weeks this time.  He set me up for the initial assessment on August 29th where they take a bunch of measurements and set up the schedule for treatment. They'll start right after labor day.

On August 28th they removed my catheter again and this time I've seemed to have healed from the spine surgery (5 weeks) and my bladder is doing better. I will have to face incontinence once again. I'll address that in a future post.