Thursday, June 19, 2014

Today was a downer

The CT scan showed nothing new. But the bone scan showed new activity on the upper spine. I think. Your mind kind of closes down when you see the scan showing a new "lit up" area. The PSA went up from 3.72 to 7.46.

However, Dr. Flaig says that the PSA does "bounce" a bit in some men. He is concerned about all of this, but he says we shouldn't immediately jump to the worst conclusions. He wants us to come back in 4 weeks and get lab work done (especially the PSA) and then 2 weeks after that he wants Marshall to have all of these scans over again. (UGH) If the universe is aligned, these tests will show the PSA has gone back down and that the spot on the bone scan is an anomaly. But at any rate, at that point we should have a handle on what's going on.

But then Dr. Flaig kind of eased us into what the next steps could be. There is another drug called Xtandi. If the Zytiga that Marshall is taking is truly failing, then we will probably try Xtandi. There is one more drug that might be approved very soon for prostate cancer patients called Xofigo, but it's not approved yet.

We asked about chemotherapy and Dr. Flaig said that sometimes three sessions of chemotherapy, each session three weeks apart, kind of "resets" the body into a place where the hormone therapy will work again. He said that's something to discuss in the future.

We went back to the hotel and had a mini-meltdown, crying a little and hugging. Now we are home and it feels good to hug the animals after being gone four days.

In the meantime, here's a picture of Marshall at the dentist yesterday Dentistry has come a long way. This dentist is treating this like artwork. Very impressive.



Sent from Marilyn's iPad


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