Your thoughts are welcome

Nigel 

Most people are still here....lol. Yes indeed and I am hoping to also complete the course. 

I had a meeting with my consultant today and his manner was much more genial and accommodating. He agreed that we will radiate the whole pelvic area and I had my first hormone injection in my stomach. It was Astra Seneca, the brand name eludes me.

I have been frustrated by some aspects of the process but I felt very pleased today that the journey had commenced. Cancer is a horrible thing. I read the poignant words of some fellow journeymen on here, stating that you leave hormone therapy a different man than the one who entered it. This prompted me to reflect and to ponder that in its simplest, cancer, is a life threatening and life changing disease. 

I hope that I am one of the more fortunate ones and that I am not ravaged by the hormone treatment and I also hope that the radiation "gunners' aim well. Each life has its own twists and turns. Twelve months ago my dream was to travel to as many countries in South East Asia as I possibly could. That is now on ice. Today my dream is to be here in two years time, cancer free and hopefully a fit man. It's a tall order but I am hoping for the best.

In the short time that I have been on this forum I have taken great solace and elicited much information. It must be like our poor unfortunate ancestors who found themselves drawn from all aspects of life thrown together into the trenches of Flanders to face a common enemy. Full of trepidation and foreboding but cherishing hope and sharing a common sense of purpose and destiny.

Be lucky.

Gabriel 

Yes Gabriel, if the plan is to use RT beyond the prostate there has to be a "target", though the information you've been given seems a bit light on as to what that might be. It's most probably lymph nodes and there are forms of scan, like PSMA PET scans, that will show up the exact location of these mets for most people. If you can get a more detailed report from your oncologist it might be useful.

The mental side of this is difficult though in some ways it's like any other tough fight in life, as you've observed.  If the injection you were given was made by AstraZeneca, it's probably Zoladex, either 1 month or 3 month version. In one sense you come out the other side of this "a different man" but if you can keep on top of this process, eat well, keep fit and hold on to your dreams for the future you can actually gain some strength and wisdom from the experience.

Zoladex [if that's what you've been given] can hit quite hard at first, though it varies greatly from one person to the next. With time the effects usually become more tolerable.

Jules

Ah Gabriel, there's many people here who know a truckload more about this than I do!

PSMA PET scans rely on using a marker which is injected into the bloodstream where it stays for long enough to allow a scanner, one of those CT ring ones they feed you through, to pick up any points in your body where the marker has accumulated. So it temporarily marks cancer cells though I think it also picks up broken bones that might be in the act of repairing themselves. Different markers are used and I believe they're all radioactive with a fairly short half life period which makes transporting them a challenge. It works for most people and when it does it's a significantly better tool than an MRI scan.

In the first week or so after you've had your first Zoladex shot you'll probably think it's not doing anything but somewhere at about the two week mark it completely knocks out libido via testosterone loss. I have to admit there was something surreal about suddenly being sexless and it was a revelation to view the world from that perspective. Momentary amusement aside, you will probably have hot flushes [flashes], you might suffer from mood swings but that doesn't mean you'll suddenly become an aggressive maniac. Mentally, my impression is that whatever underlying quirks you might have will be magnified. Physically the loss of testosterone seems to change your body's priorities from keeping your strength up to putting on a nice layer of fat ... annoying! As a personal observation I thought that any gains in fitness were lost very quickly, probably for the same reasons.

In some ways I think this is just as hard or harder for wives/partners as it is for those of us who are dealing with cancer but if you're thinking "humility and gratitude" I suspect you're going to manage the twists and turns ahead very well,

Jules