Completed annual physical with internist—8-years post-treatment

Undetectable PSA after >8 years since surgery. For years now, I've had my annual PSA test as part of my normal physical exam blood work, then I email my surgeon's PA the result.




We always go over the list of meds I take, both prescribed and over-the-counter. He's asked me this before, but asked again this year, "Where do you get your tadalifil (Cialis active ingredient)?"

"Offshore mail-order," I reply (again).

"How's it working?" he asks. "Working well," I reply, not feeling the need to embellish about this morning's most excellent conjugal relations.

"The quality of offshore medications cannot be assured, and I would never recommend offshore critical patient meds such as heart regulation treatments, but for erectile dysfunction it's fine. You may have a slight decrease in potency, but you'll probably never know it."

I shrug. "It's been fine."

"Most of my prostate cancer patients do the same thing," he adds.


See you next year!

Post Edited (NKinney) : 9/14/2017 11:45:03 AM (GMT-6)

NKinney said...
See you next year!

Thanks for the replies. It's always good to get a clean bill of health. I didn't previously mentioned it, but everything else was good too, in addition to PSA. In fact, PSA was not the first think I looked for when I got my bloodwork myQuest report with online results. I'm one of the cases, like many of you, who got cured of PC when cure was probably not really needed...so my potential medical concerns lay elsewhere.




Last year, ChrisR posted THIS link to an article about when it might be appropriate to STOP ongoing monitoring of PSA.

The article's title is, "PSA monitoring after prostate cancer surgery: how long is long enough?"

The summary is right there in the opening sentence, which reads:

[The] paper ... suggests that annual PSA testing “may be safely discontinued after 10 years for men with a prostatectomy Gleason score 6 or less...”

I'm Gleason 6, with 10 years on the near-term horizon...something for me to ponder...

Who else is coming up on 10 years and fits the same category...? What are you going to do?

Post Edited (NKinney) : 9/14/2017 9:18:51 AM (GMT-6)