g0177325: Hope his cancer hasn't taken a turn for the worse.

Thanks, g0177325, for your kind thoughts.

In short, for a man with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer, I am doing very well.

My labs have been excellent for about a year -- tests on my heart, kidneys, and liver are all normal, despite the strong medications, including chemotherapy.

My oncologist ordered a PSMA PET scan in July to make certain the cancer wasn't being tricky and hiding somewhere. The scan showed excellent radiographic response to triplet therapy with complete resolution of nodal disease, near-complete metabolic response in bone metastases, marked improvement in the primary tumor, and no evidence of new or progressive metastatic disease.

In plain English, the cancer in my many lymph nodes is completely gone, the seven bones with cancerous lesions have healed or are healing, and the tumor is significantly improved (though the scan cannot tell if the SUV uptake is residual disease or dead cancer cells). Also, there is no sign of any new spread of the cancer anywhere.

Now, having said that, with stage 4 cancer things can change quickly. But my oncologist is happy and has moved my monthly visits to quarterly.

As you can imagine, this disease has made me more acutely aware of my limited time on this Earth and I am taking that time to enjoy family. I have also started writing a novel and am about 60 pages in.

I spend about 30 minutes a week reading the boards here but have stepped back from contributing. Best wishes to all of you.