Relieved and Freaked at the Same Time

We dragged ourselves to the Cancer Center yesterday in the gloom and rain.  Our oncologist always kindly gives us the news as soon as he walks in the door and we breathed a sigh of relief hearing that Ernie's psa continues to be undetectable.

So...relief.

Then, as we chatted with the oncologist (whom we love), Ernie brought up the treatment option we had talked about a bit at our last appointment.  Since his cancer returned he has been on quarterly hormone injections---this is what has suppressed the cancer growth and resulted in the undetectable psa's.  Now, in the scheme of cancer treatments the hormone side effects are nothing horrible at all.  That being said, there are side effects and they can be wearing...especially after a couple of years.  Our doctor had brought up some studies showing that going off the hormones until the psa rises to a certain point have been shown to have the same length of survival as staying on them all the time.  Now this makes me a little green around the edges....but Ernie was really interested.  We googled it and talked and I had promptly put it out of my mind because that's what I do when I don't like things.  He brought it up again yesterday however and our oncologist talked about more recent studies that were larger with longer follow ups that confirmed the initial results.  So Ernie decided to hold off on getting his hormone shot yesterday.

Gulp.

So now we will just wait and see how long it takes his psa to go up, and how high.  I guess the plan is to let it go up as high as 10-20 before starting back on the hormones.  Gulp again.  As I said to the doctor, "this is totally freaking me out."  Not perhaps the most uh....articulate comment...but accurate.  Our doctor assured us that if I got too stressed out and Ernie couldn't stand me any longer (well, he didn't put it that way) that we should just call and we can start it up again.  So I will try to be calm about it and not get so wound up that I snap at Ernie and cry in the parking garage like I did yesterday.

Of course I've been tormenting myself by reading about this online...but for everything I read that freaks me the fuck out....I also read something positive....for example that this can delay hormone refractory disease---which is basically when the hormones stop suppressing the growth of the cancer....although if that doesn't change the survival rate then do we care?  I don't know.

That's the thing about cancer----it's an unknown.  It's so hard to accept that there are all these different options and sometimes you're just going by feel.  You want to be told that you have x so we'll do y and we'll end up at z.  It's not that simple though.

O.k., o.k.  Enough.

I think we're going to try to go on a date (!) tonight and see 50 50---the movie that's about cancer. 

Geesh.

Here's Ernie putting a piece in the jigsaw puzzle before he settles down with his crossword and infusion.