Pelvic Lymph Node Radiation

Hi everyone. Unfortunately, I’m back with more questions after a couple years of things going smoothly for Dads prostate cancer. His PSA is still undetectable and he’s doing pretty well with the mets to ribs. They have stayed the same size. He has a pelvic lymph node that doubled from February to May. They were able to radiate that spot and he has been finished for about 3 weeks. It was the cause of terrible leg pain for him. So bad that he hasn’t worked his summer retirement job and spends a lot of time laying around when he is usually very active. He had been on Erleada but since the lymph node grew, they changed him to Lynparza. That screwed up his labs so he hasn’t been on that since about May. He also had to have a stent put in his right ureter so that the kidney would drain all the way. His kidney function labs were bad but they are slowly coming around. The plan is to hopefully get him back on lynparza soon. He is still taking the Lupron shot but they have also stopped the Xgeva due to labs (kidneys). My main question is, has anyone else experienced this? His leg pain is usually better now, for the most part, but he is having a lot of right leg swelling. The lymph node was on the right side. The leg gets about double the size of the right leg at times. He elevates it as much as possible, while still trying to live his life. If anyone has any experience with this I look forward to hearing about it.

My wife has same issue as JNF’s wife, sounds like lymphedema but given your Dad’s complicated medical situation, it could be due to a combination of issues.

PT, exercises, and compression sleeves are the typical “solutions” for treating lymphedema so he should get a referral from his doctor.

Sorry to hear that, DVT makes sense.

Don’t know what to tell you. My Dad was one thing after another and it just breaks down the system after a while. I hope they get it under control for both of you.

Sorry about that, not my intent. My Dad passed at 96 with his PCa not being the cause so not all bad (heart failure).

You can have hope and despair at the same time which fluctuates with each visit or call. After a while, it just becomes the way it is and easier to live with once you accept that he will not live forever.

Not sure I am a whole lot smarter from that experience but try to appreciate being in relatively good health (except for PCa) in my 70’s and that time goes faster the older I get

Some of this is familiar, my Dad refused to wear his hearing aids in the last couple of years which made communication difficult (a common situation I was told). Luckily, he had no pain issues but almost everything else caused him problems that made life difficult. I had many discussions with my father and they generally started with “this is no way to live” once we got alone. He was really discouraged as well because he could see no way out and began to not trust the medical system any longer even though he gave them all the credit for keeping him alive a few years earlier with (heart surgery, pacemaker, etc.). He refused to go to hospital unless he could not breath from pneumonia symptoms and would not do much to help himself (loved ice cream and was diabetic at this point, who was to deny him things that made him visibly happy). Good luck with this part of the journey, it is tough on everyone related to him.