An Oncologist Talks About Stage 4 PCa with Mets and End of Life

I found this via a website called "Quora". 

One reason I moved to California and am working so hard to stay here is because California has a law known as the End of Life Option Act.  This allows a terminally ill patient to end their own life with a legally prescribed lethal amount of barbiturates.

Because I don't plan to suffer away like what is described by this oncologist:

Gary Larson, MD - Have Treated Over 10,000 Prostate Cancer Patients

Answered Feb 22, 2018 · Upvoted by Margarita Orlova, I am biologist in profession and a frequent patient myself

I currently have a patient taking the equivalent of 3,500 percocets per month to control the pain from stage IV prostate cancer. (1) PEOPLE ARE FOND OF USING THE TRITE EXPRESSION THAT MOST MEN DIE WITH PROSTATE CANCER RATHER THAN OF IT. THIS IS WHAT IT CAN BE LIKE TO DIE WITH IT.

Prostate cancer preferentially spreads to the bones, although now that stage IV prostate cancer patients are living longer with chemotherapy and newer treatment modalities, we are seeing spread to visceral organs as well (lung, liver, brain, etc.). They also have more time to develop the conditions described below.

Bone metastases are usually asymptomatic when first discovered, but over time, they erode the healthy bone, destroying nerves, and causing excruciating pain. Men will often have dozens or even a hundred metastatic sites that each hurt just like a broken bone, not to mention compressing spinal nerves, causing pain in the entire distribution of those nerves. Some bones do break in the process.

Skull base metastases deserve special mention. Compressing the cranial nerves as they exit the skull base, may paralyze cranial nerves causing the inability to use the eye muscles, facial muscles or swallowing muscles. If one’s facial muscles are paralyzed, they can’t blink, which leads to keratitis and blindness (unless the eyelid is partially sewn shut - or weights are surgically implanted in the eyelid to allow it go down all the way. If one can’t swallow, they need a feeding tube (these men are fully awake and functional, but will starve to death without the ability to swallow food - not the situation where a feeding tube is placed to keep comatose patients alive, which is a completely different issue). Not being able to swallow saliva means they must spit 1–2 liters of it every day, or have a fistula placed so it drains out of their neck. Compression of the trigeminal nerves cause pain in the distribution of that branch or branches - it’s like having a toothache in all your teeth at once - or that same intensity of pain in the upper part of the face.

While cancer spreads to the rest of the body, it’s also progressing in the pelvis, where it started. Bladder invasion causes intractable spasms and a constant painful feeling of needing to urinate. A catheter becomes necessary - usually placed through the abdominal wall directly into the bladder, which is less uncomfortable than having it go through the penis for months or years. The cancer can grow posteriorly to close off the rectum, requiring a colostomy - or just causing death from peritonitis. (A colostomy doesn’t do anything about the constant feeling that you have a butcher knife stuck up your ass.) Obstruction of the ureters requires nephrostomies (urine draining out of the back - from where the kidneys are). A well informed patient may refuse nephrostomies and die a relative painless death from renal failure in the next few weeks or months.

What about Hospice, you might ask? Hospice is generally reserved for patients with a 6 month life expectancy - these men may live for a year or two with these problems.

Not all patients get all these symptoms, but just pick a few of them and imagine living with them for 2–3 years.

Many men who die “with” prostate cancer may have liver failure, bone marrow failure, heart failure, renal failure, etc. listed as the immediate cause of death on their death certificate. Listing these diagnoses as being secondary to prostate cancer may or may not result in them being counted as a prostate cancer deaths.

The 27,000 men officially listed as dying FROM prostate cancer last year may, in many respects, be the lucky ones. They have come to the end of living with it.

You can see why I support PSA screening for prostate cancer. 90% of the men who are cured of prostate cancer had their disease caught early by screening. Those who don’t are playing Russian roulette with fate described above.

It may be necessary to place a weight in the eyelid or sew it partially shut due to facial nerve paralysis caused by skull base metastasis from prostate cancer.

A nephrostomy tube placed due to kidney obstruction by prostate cancer.

Spinal fractures due to prostate cancer.

Aside: I didn’t mention the morbidity from treatment - living without testosterone for years, side effects from chemotherapy and a variety of newer side effects we are discovering from the newer drugs that are now available to treat prostate cancer.

(1) 320 mg of oxycontin per day + 240 mg immediate release oxycodone = 560 mg/day X 31 days = 17,360 mg/month - which is the equivalent of 3,472 Percocet-5’s per month.