On the Right Track!

Good news from the oncologist today. My bone scan from a couple of weeks ago came back, and most of the bone metastases have retreated considerably! My normally reserved oncologist broke into a rare use of positive phrases: "it's remarkable -- we almost never see the metastases diminish."

Also, at the end of December my PSA had declined again, to 1.6 (*almost* normal!)

Apparently most of the time, the "standard" treatment I'm on (the hormone blockage therapy that zeroes out my testosterone) merely slows the metastases down. (Or in the best case, brings it to a halt). The bone scan instead shows that the spots have almost disappeared -- the doctor says that some of what's left is evidence of arthritis rather than cancer (I'll take that choice any day!)

This confirms what the technician said a couple of weeks ago when she printed out the film of my scan and exclaimed -- 'wow, we never see that happen!"

Apparently all the effort (and expense) that we went to to get to Germany for the treatments by Dr. Thaller have paid off handsomely -- what he did had an amazing effect! Thanks to all of you who contributed for making this possible!

Now comes the hard part, which is keeping these gains intact, and continuing to work on the cancer that remains. Today is the start of my enzyme therapy treatment, which is a *lot* more labor-intensive, but reportedly very effective! (More on that in a later post.)