Prostate cancer – my story so far.

If you have not already done so – please go and get a blood sample taken and check your Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) level.

My late father was a urologist and when I turned 50, he recommended that I got a PSA test done every year, based on the fact that both he and his dad had prostate issues in the past.

At 50 my PSA level was 1.5. It stayed at that level for quite some years but in my late 50s it started to increase. A few years ago, it crossed the dreaded boundary of 4 and continued to 5 and then to 6.

I had my first ever appointment with a urologist and got an MRI scan and a biopsy. The results weren’t particularly worrying and I was placed on so-called Active Surveillance which meant frequent check-ups to monitor my condition.

A year later after another MRI and biopsy they told me that I had got myself an aggressive cancer – with a Gleason score of 7. Fortunately, all the disease was in the prostate itself and very localised. The doctors recommended surgical treatment.

At my local University Hospital, they were just about to start a clinical study using a novel technique called focal brachytherapy – I signed up for it.

This meant that I would not have a prostatectomy operation to remove my prostate. I would have a procedure where radioactive seeds of metal were implanted into the prostate gland, precisely where the cancer cells had been detected, like internal radiation. It was a four-hour procedure under general anaesthesia.

It is now 18 months since the operation.

My PSA has dropped from about 6 to less than 1 in that time – and with very few very minor, side-effects.

I just had another MRI scan and biopsy and I am basically cancer-free – the clinicians want to follow up in a year´s time just to make sure.

I never had any symptoms of the illness. But there is little question that if I had not had my PSA monitored, it is likely that my life could have been very different, today or in 5 or 10 years from now.

I will forever be grateful to my dad for insisting.

And this is the reason for writing these lines – if you are male and over 50 – go to see your GP and demand to get a PSA test. Today rather than tomorrow! All you have to invest is a little time and a few drops of blood.

Do it please!