Chemotherapy
Tips and advice for any sexual side effects of treatment
Ensure your partner is sympathetic.
How this treatment impacted my life the most
Stopping physical activity, e.g. badminton
If I had to do it all over again, would I choose the same treatment?
Not sure
Why did I give this answer?
Because I have had chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone treatment (which will go on for ever) I have found it difficult to work out which treatment was causing what effects. Although I started off in this questionnaire by stating chemotherapy, many of my answers probably relate more to hormone treatment. I had a good response to the chemotherapy in that some of my tumours shrunk. I think the hormone treatment should be credited for the dramatic drop in PSA, and I am 'happy' to live with the side effects. I am not so sure about the radiotherapy. NB My story is on the yananow.org website, and I have a diagram that I put together in the project in 2020 that led up to the infopool.
Chemotherapy
How this treatment impacted my life the most
Relief that I was being treated.
If I had to do it all over again, would I choose the same treatment?
Yes
Why did I give this answer?
Because it worked
Hormone Therapy (injections)
How this treatment impacted my life the most
Impossible to disassociate this from the other treatments
If I had to do it all over again, would I choose the same treatment?
Yes
Why did I give this answer?
It works
Hormone Therapy (tablets)
How this treatment impacted my life the most
Fatigue, hot flushes.
If I had to do it all over again, would I choose the same treatment?
Yes
Why did I give this answer?
It worked, and continues to work.
Radiotherapy
How this treatment impacted my life the most
Seems to have made urgency and frequency of peeing worse.
If I had to do it all over again, would I choose the same treatment?
Not sure
Why did I give this answer?
As soon as I was diagnosed in 2018 I started hormone tablets and injections immediately, then I had chemotherapy. The hormone tablets were stopped. My PSA dropped dramatically, and the scans following the chemo indicated a shrinkage in the tumors. However my PSA then rose slightly - I was put back on daily hormone tablets (in addition to the 3-monthly injection) and sent for radiotherapy. My PSA dropped back to almost nothing. Obviously, medicine is not a precise science so I cannot be sure about the radiotherapy, but I am unsure as to whether the radiotherapy actually helped - and I feel that my peeing (which had been very good following a TURP in 2010) was made worse by the radiotherapy.