The Big Sleep – Part II

Saw the consultant yesterday and mentioned my on-going fatigue. His immediate reaction was “That will be the tamsulosin – younger people don’t get on with it very well”. Thanks for telling me earlier!

As for whether he is right, you know what its like reading the side effects of medicines, which always seem to include headaches, back pain, tiredness – and my favourite, only ocassionally seen, of “death”. Just a minor side effect that!

A quick skim of the literature (with asthenia – posh speak for weakness/tiredness) fails to pull up much, but I will try the recommended “herbal” alternative of “saw palmetto” and see what happens.

Anyway, if nothing else the (never sensitive) consultant reinforced my prejudice that perhaps fatigue is less well reported as a side effect as “older guys don’t notice as they expect to be tired”. Oh for a good bed side manner!

Younger Men and Prostate Awareness

Did you know its prostate cancer awareness month? No, neither did I -at least until today, so not sure how well that is working then.

Had an exchange of email with the organisers, looking to see if I could raise awareness at work. As part of that, they are looking for personal stories, which got me thinking back to one of my original objectives of helping other people in my situation find out relevant stuff.

So how will people find this blog, other than me telling them about it directly, or having it passed on (as Lg has done to Mf)? I guess we’re back to on-line marketing (an on-going subtext at work and home for Mp’s business) and making things visible to the internet search engines.

So while this blog makes the first page of Google for queries on “early onset prostate cancer”, we’re nowhere for queries on …

Younger Men Prostate Cancer

Lets hope this post doesn’t go unnoticed by the search engines and as a result will direct more people searching for info on younger men and prostate cancer here.

Finally, while we are on the subject, its worth mentioning that there is a good online support group for younger men with prostate cancer, albeit hosted from the US, if you ever find yourself in need of one.

p.s. Was that the right title for this post or should it really be young men with prostate cancer? …

The numbers – what have I got?

Before going on, its worth putting down the diagnostic numbers that describe my condition, so I don’t forget. As for how we got here, more on that later. My raw numbers, the sort of thing I imagine any prostate cancer sufferer could rattle off for you, are:

PSA: 4.3 – a measure of the marker hormone used to detect potential cancer activity – my socre is not bad if you are 60, but a warning sign for someone my age where it should be 2.5 – done through a blood test;

Gleason score: 3+3 – a measure of how cancerous cells look in a biopsy – at the low risk end of the spectrum and the depending on who you talk to – found out by biopsy;

Staging: T1c – a measure of the spread of the cancer – my score (which goes up to T4) means it is still all within the prostate and is of microscopic size – judged using digital rectal exam (finger up the bottom) and confirmed by MRI

Spread: No, Mx – means no spread to the lymph nodes (No) and the doctors don’t think it is worth testing whether it has got into the bones (Mx) – first value got by MRI scan and second by bone scan.

All in all, not a bad set of numbers that puts me in a low risk category – except for the complication of my age – did I mention I am too young for this – and my core spread but that will have to wait as I’ve had double my five minutes …