In March, I posted that I've been diagnosed with prostate cancer. I took a few months to consider my options, did a bunch of research and talked it through with Carol, and a few weeks ago decided that I would move forward with radiation therapy.
My initial inclination was to just have the damned prostate removed, with the idea that removing it would not only get rid of the cancer, but would also relieve the symptoms of having an enlarged prostate. Unfortunately, research showed that the side effects of having no prostate are very similar to the side effects of having an enlarged prostate. And since having your prostate surgically removed has a risk of severing the nerves that control, heh heh heh, I decided to go the radiation route.
So I contacted the radiation oncologist to start the process. During our telephone consult, I told him that I was due for my five year colonoscopy (lucky me!) and he told me that I needed to deal with that before I started the radiation treatments. Ugh. So I scheduled my colonoscopy and had it last month. The good news is that my colon looked better than last time, so now I don't need another colonoscopy for seven years. Huzzah!
With that finished, I take the first step for radiation treatment on July 16. That involves a surgical procedure with local anesthetic to insert three gold "fiducials" into my prostate. These pellets can be detected by the cyberknife scanner during my radiation to triangulate the position of the prostate, enabling precise targeting of the cancer. Additionally, the doctor will inject a hydrogel between my prostate and rectum to increase the distance between them, reducing the amount of radiation that might hit my rectum, making the procedure safer.
Once next week's procedure is done, there is a scanning session to map out everything, then the radiation sessions will follow with, I think, daily procedures over a couple of weeks.
Then I'm done and we wait to confirm that it worked.
No comments:
Post a Comment