Day 89 - Undetectable

"Great news.  Your PSA was undetectable."

So that's how the surgeon started his conversation with me today.  In the excitement of hearing the good news, I didn't specifically ask him if he would call me cancer-free, but I pretty much would at this point.  Between the post-surgery biopsies of the prostate and the lymph nodes, and now the news of an undetectable PSA, I'd be willing to say with about 99.5% confidence that I'm cancer-free.

That makes today a pretty good day.

I'll have to do follow-up PSA tests every six months for the first two years, and then yearly after that.

I suspect that I'll always be wondering whether or not I have cancer going forward.  I guess that's one of the side effects of having cancer in the first place.

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The drainage output remained steady over the weekend: 40, 30, 30, 30, 40, and 30.  So we agreed to keep my appointment for Thursday afternoon and monitor the output between now and then.  With a little bit of luck, the drain will come out Thursday.

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I continue to progress with controlling the incontinence, too.  I'm finding that I'm having fewer incidents when I stand (although it does take some effort to prevent them from occurring), and that the volume of the "squirts" seems to be decreasing as well.  Of course, a good sneeze or cough will cause an incident almost all the time, but again, a small incident.