Wednesday, June 14, 2023

16 years after salvage radiation, my PSA...

Just had a PSA done--still less than 0.10.  I had been frantic a couple of years ago when I had two ultrasensitive tests done just over a year apart. The first one showed .02, and was the first PSA that was "detectable" since salvage radiation did its job in 2007. Then in 2021 I had another ultrasensitive test. It was 0.05, or more than double.  I went to a prostate cancer oncologist, who reassured me that it was probably nothing. He said he didn't order ultrasensitive tests for people like me (post-surgery, post-radiation). So we've gone with the regular assay.


If my PSA had really been rising at the rate it seemed to on the ultrasensitive test, I would have easily passed the 0.1 mark on the standard assay by now. The fact that it did not is quite reassuring.  I've now had multiple standard PSA tests, all "less than 0.1".  No threat.

Lymphoma, treatment for lymphoma, or more likely, my heart, is the real threat to making it as long as my parents have. Both parents are alive and well, in the 80s and 90s.  My grandmother is over 105! 

Anyway, that's it for now.  

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