Going up to Mass General to see my cancer doc. I have had swollen lymph nodes in the right side of my groin for a while now. Since most of the cancer in my prostate was in the right side it seemed logical to me that the swelling might be due to the spread prostate cancer. I wrote my surgeon about it. He called me back and said that he doubted that the swelling was due to spread prostate cancer because when prostate cancer spreads to the lymph nodes it goes to lymph nodes deep in the abdomen and not to those in the groin. He wondered if it might be a hernia, but thought that I should see Dr. Smith in any case. So here I go. I had a PSA test last week and the result was 0.92 which is up from 0.67 last June and 0.50 in September of 2008. I plugged those numbers into doubling rate caculator I found on the web. Plugging in the data we get the result:
The best fit to the doubling time is 1.45 years.
The doubling time lies within the interval (1.27,1.69) years.
The precision of the fit is good with chi^2 per degree of freedom = 0.22.
Without treatment the psa could reach the life-threatening level of 4,000
in the year 2028 or within the interval (2025,2031).
[Graph of likely evolution of psa.]
The input data were:
On 15 September 2008 his psa was 0.50 (ng/ml).
On 6 June 2009 his psa was 0.67 (ng/ml).
On 20 December 2009 his psa was 0.92 (ng/ml).
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So if the doubling rate doesn't increase, which unfortunately it seems to be doing, I will have quite a few more years of life. And there is always the hope that with all the research being done there will be ways to deal with the cancer in the coming years.
I Woods Hole, time to catch the bus to Boston.
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