cccorlew

My PSA is just a tiny bit high. My doc wants me to take another test.

BUT

She says 3 days of no sex or bicycling before the test.

I told her I bike to work, and bike to her office. I do long rides on the weekends. It's how I get places.
I didn't even mention it's #30daysofbiking, which is this month, and I am not planning on missing a day.

And no sex to offset the no cycling? That's just crazy talk.

I think I'll just blow this test off, and assume the cycling and other fun activities are artificially inflating the numbers.

And get off my lawn.

Dudelsack 

Honest, I really am lying in a bed is a Holiday Inn Express as I type this out.

I don't have any words of wisdom for you. I just appreciated the irony.

climberguy

You no doubt know the lecture, about your health being the most important thing and all that; I won't bore you by repeating it.

I'm coming up on two years (and a number of operations) still treating a medical issue that I should have gotten checked out sooner. All I can say is that it's kept me off the bike (and w/o sex) a lot more than three days.

Maybe you could find a time in the next several months to sacrifice the 3 days. It's totally your call.

cccorlew

You make it sound so grown up and reasonable. I'm not there yet. I want to play with my toys and stay up late.

B. Carfree

Well, you can do some altitude training by hiking in the Sierra for a week. That would be almost as fun as riding. Maybe you can ride the Eastern Sierra Double and stick around the mountains for a few days of hiking to recover. I'm sure your students wouldn't miss you, especially if you just leave them an exam to do while you're away.

I don't know how you're going to swing the other abstinence thing.

Good luck. Hopefully everything will work out in the end.

donheff

The medical establishment now counsels against routine testing for PSA levels. If the test stays high what are you going to do, biopsy? The evidence says you are more likely to have serious complications from the biopsy and possible treatments than from the prostate itself. This one is tough to call but you should educate yourself as much as possible before proceeding so you know what you really want. Don't just rely on the opinion of your GP, they are all over the place on this and there is no telling whether your doctor has anything better to say than another. Better to decide for yourself.

tim24k

I'm going through the same issues right now and I had the biopsy about seven months ago. It turned up negative thank goodness. But I'm only now getting over the procedure.

I have lost four friends to prostate cancer so far and I have one more still fighting it after ten years. The cancer has moved into his bones now.

Like ether posters said, it is your choice.

billydonn

Put the test off until the end do the month. Then follow adult instructions.

RonH

What???? You have a woman doctor checking your prostate??? Women don't have a prostate. What do they know?

climberguy

There's a lot to be said for that position. I still stay up too late (12:30am last night) and buy too many toys. But working in an occasional medical exam, with its inconvenience, isn't necessarily a major change in lifestyle.

Hangtownmatt

I've been going through this for the last 4-5 years. It is not the PSA number as much as it is how rapidly it rises. I'm not a doctor, but I think that if you follow the same routine (biking, sex, etc.) and the number does not continue to rise than you should be OK. What you need is several tests (data points) to graph the pattern. It wasn't until I got up around PSA 10 that I started skipping the sex and staying off the bike a few days prior. It does make a difference.

Matt

Hermes

HTFU and go for a biopsy. Cycle over to the docs office, get the 12 needle shots in your prostate, cycle to work and then cycle home.

NOS88

Clarabelle

To have an elevated PSA as you get older is pretty common. If it is steadily going up over time, then it is time to worry. I had a biopsy several years ago because of it being elevated, but since then my readings have been up and down so the urologist isn't worried. I have it check annually and that's all. I'm not sure how soon she wants you to retest, but unless it was really high, I'd wait to retest for awhile.

Nightshade

Prostrate cancer is a terrible painful way to die. Blow off the test and that may be your fate.

If prostrate cancer is caught early (that's what a PSA test is all about) you have a chance for a cure or longer life. Let it fester like you want to do is suicide.

Now let me see.........take the test and live or blow off the test and die. What to do, what to do???

donheff

You make it sound like that opinion is the obvious best way to go yet the medical establishment changed it;s advice to just the opposite. You stand a better chance of dieing from complications arising from biopsies and surgery than you do from cancer. So the trade off is risking a significant possibility of nasty adverse effects with a small possibility of death to maybe catch that small possibility of a very bad cancer thus heading off a terrible demise. Not an easy or obvious choice. We all face this dilemma and we all need to make our decisions with as many facts as we can muster.

The other side of this debate centers around not what the doctors advise but what they choose for themselves. I haven't seen any measures about how doctors, themselves, deal with high PSA but an article titled The Bitter End has a nice chart showing how the doctors who advise you to get all those life end treatments say they would deal with it themselves. Not exactly consistent with their advice:

John_V 

The pro's and con's of PSA testing have and will be around for a long time. Like everything else, it just depends on which side you want to go with. PSA testing, in itself, does not always lead to biopsy tests unless the results warrant it. I can speak from experience in telling you that I probably wouldn't be here if my docs hadn't done more than one PSA test, in six months, to conclude that the PSA Velocity between the tests warranted a biopsy which determined I had an aggressive growing cancer. However, I do have to agree that once you reach a certain age, even with a high PSA Velocity, further testing may be more harmful and even if you do have prostate cancer, you are more likely to die of other medical complications than you will from prostate cancer. But for some panel to tell men in their early 50's and 60's that there is no need to have regular PSA testing is just not good advice.

If I were the OP, I would do as much research as I could on the subject and learn as much about it as I could. This would help you make a more informative decision when discussing further tests, such as biopsies, with your physician. I would also do some research on the urologist in your area and find out which one has a better track record so that you can determine if he/she is the one you want to do the biopsy. I wouldn't let your general practitioner or internal medicine doc perform the biopsy. Depending on your geographic location, I would also do some research on urologist in larger cities with better facilities and would not rule out making a trip there to have a second opinion or have a biopsy done. But that's just my opinion.

cranky old dude

My rising PSA count and dropping Free PSA % has led me to two biopsies in a 22 month period, both coming up negative. Either I don't have cancer, don't have cancer yet, or the tumor is so small that both biopsies missed it. I get bloodwork every six months. They'll either catch my cancer early or determine that the growing numbers and the range that they are in is the norm for me.

At either rate, I forego the fun stuff for a week or so prior to each blood test in the hopes to actually extend the fun stuff over the long haul. That's my choice and may not apply to others. I might mention that my bride also believes I'm making the right choices in following up on the PSA levels and after all, she also has a stake in the outcome.

As far as the biopsies are concerned the first one wasn't too bad and the second one with newer equipment was a cake-walk. I experienced no ill effects from the procedures at all. I scheduled each biopsy for early morning. By mid afternoon I could barely feel a slight discomfort of the prostate. The following day life was business as usual.

cccorlew

I won't leave you all hanging. I'll get this one done, and start a back up plan.

zonatandem

My oncologist made no such demands, as 'no bike/no sex'.
Yup, had brachytheraphy (seed implants) and am now cancer-free for 7 years.
After the seed implants was off the bike for about 3 weeks, but now at age 80+ still ride 100 to 125 miles a week.
Was it worth it?
Yup!
Rudy/zonatandem

robtown

Perhaps, but they have slender fingers.

[TMI]
After the PSA and finger test I got a biopsy. It went poorly and after a night at the hospital I got scheduled for surgery. With green laser treatment I did not have the traditional 2 week hospital stay. I could have returned to work in a couple days but I took about 10 days. My rather loud vocal response to urination pain over that time period would have scared them. Fortunately that passed and the results have been very good.
[/TMI]

trackhub

Doctors are a strange group. I biked to work the day of my last annual physical. (we have on site medical) and my PSA level was well within the normal limits. I had also taken an evening
spin the night before. Doctor was not concerned at all. My Doctor, at that point, was a cyclist himself. Alas, there was some turnover in the office, and my new PCP is not a cyclist.
He looks at me totally dumbfounded when I bring it up. Apparently, "at my age", I'm supposed to be playing golf. Not gonna happen.

JohnJ80

Coming to a bike forum for advice on your prostate and sex life? really?

J.

Totoboa

As has been posted women just might have much smaller diameter digits. Mine does. And what do men know about their prostate, or more to the point, how it feels ? Or, please don't answer that.

Dudelsack 

I think a woman doctor would be more careful, give the frequency they themselves have to go through stuff like that. And they have skinnier fingers.