2020 Monday — Inside and Out

Today at 4:45 at Kaiser in Ontario, Mr.Fun had his "planning" meeting (last meeting before radiation begins). They put tiny tattoos on him for alignment with radiation and explained a few things like, he is not to take Vitamin A, C, or E.

He was given his schedule--radiation begins the morning of Wednesday, November 18th (I wanted to scream; we've got to wait 9 more days!). The final radiation treatment is December 29th. No radiation on Saturdays, Sundays, or holidays.

This has not been a good day for me. I've had 2 days of headaches and I'm fighting depression; leaving the coast and knowing that we won’t be back there for possibly two months is depressing, not to mention 28 radiation treatments for Mr. Fun.

We’ve been dealing with medical stuff since February when Mr.Fun first went to the doctor and blood work was ordered to check his PSA.

His PSA was high, so next was a biopsy of the prostate on April 15th. Then on April 29th the verdict. Of the 12 specimens from the biopsy, 2 were cancerous, 10 were not. Then after a CT Scan, one lymph node, which is outside of the prostate area, was questionable. The doctor did not want to do surgery if a lymph node was cancerous.

So the doctor’s recommendation was to use hormone therapy all summer to make sure the lymph node is not cancerous, and then at the end of summer recheck the lymph node. The hormone starves the cancer and virtually “kills” it (keeps it from growing). The recheck of the lymph node means if it is not cancerous, then the surgery would be scheduled in September.

When the end of August arrived and we finally met with the doctor face-to-face he explained that the lymph node had not changed and therefore, he thought it was not cancerous, but then he went on to explain that he thought radiation treatment, instead of surgery, was a much better option for Mr. Fun.

Surgery has more complications. We were fine with that advice and strong recommendation, but I think knowing that back in May would have been very helpful. So here we are still working on getting radiation started. It just seems like it is taking forever to move forward.

That’s my news for this Monday,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too!