October Update on Treatment

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Hey, I turn sixty-five this month. Not bad, eh?

It messes with insurance, though. I'm still not sure what the entire impact will be, but it costs me more since I am keeping my BCBS as a Supplementary Plan. Funny, the cost of BCBS didn't change at all. Do we think that has something to do with my cancer? I sure do.

So, I'm on a standard treatment now. The RELUGOLIX that Dr. Corn put me on seems to work fine fighting the cancer, and the side effects are manageable, though not particularly welcome.

I'm still tired. A lot. Perhaps that will pass when the cancer is mostly removed from my system? Or not.

I get the hot flashes, but that makes sense, since the Lab work shows a Total Testosterone of 7 ng/dL.

Yeah, back to that old woman level, since a man my age should have 193-740. The problems associated with that are exactly what you might expect. Just leave it at that.

My PSA, however, is a nice 0.2 ng/mL. The Doc likes that number, so I don't need any more testing until the end of the month. That will be the first two-month interval since I was diagnosed.

It's odd. I still have aches and pains in my bones. Doc tends to think it shouldn't be from the cancer.

My eyesight? Worsening, but maybe that's old age. I went for an eye exam before my insurance wore out and have some new glasses. Bifocals. Yeah.

My skin? It's doing the best it can, but I feel it is ravaged by all that is happening in my body.

The headaches? Some days bad, some days worse. A few days hardly. Is this related to cancer? Who knows. There are a lot of people without cancer that suffer from much worse headaches than I have. I can deal with them. 

Poor Darling has to deal with all of this, all the time. I do feel a bit of a burden.

On the bright side, the weather here in Texas is getting much nicer as we move into fall. I mean, the temperature last night was about the same as a warm summer day in Michigan. Good stuff.

And what's with that Stock Market? That's another post...

In the meantime, I don't know what to say to people who ask me how I'm doing. I just say "I'm fine" because I am. I mean, we're all dying, and doctors don't give you a timeline with all this stuff, do they. I guess I am as fine as anyone else. When I go to MD Anderson, I see people who are in so much worse shape than I am, and so many of them are young. It breaks my heart.

So, yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for asking.

And thanks for reading. God bless y'all.

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