Let's face it, women talk to each other about medical situations, men do not. This is not an old fashioned view, it is a current view, and those with prostate cancer (or any other type) should, in my opinion, speak out more and inform. There is a fear though that if you do speak out, you will be criticised for scare-mongering, or worse, for mis-diagnosing someone else's condition.

Everyone's journey is different and not all will follow mine, so anything that happened to me should not be a sign that it could be happening to you, or your male partner. In other words, I am no medical expert, the following should not be taken as medical advice, and if you have any suspicions of any cancer you should consult a specialist such as your GP. The logo shown here is from an association that I support but it does not reflect any of my views and cannot therefore be construed as a plea for routine testing.

My own story starts some twenty-two years before diagnosis, when I reached fifty, and went for routine screening at my GP surgery which included the finger up the bum thing that puts a lot of men off. It is, I am informed, for the doctor to see if the prostate feels smooth and therefore healthy.

A few years later, I reached a management level within my job where I was given private health care which involved an annual health check. During one of these health checks, I was asked when my PSA had last been tested, and on answering that it was a few years back, I was told that at my age it should be checked every year.

On making an appointment with my GP and asking for a PSA blood test I was told that they were next to useless, gave false positives and false negatives, and the only true test was to have a biopsy of my prostate where a sliver would be removed and tested. I declined.

I had no PSA test from that date until I was in my seventies and had symptoms. Tiredness, stomach aches, constipation, aching neck and shoulders, could all be explained away in one way or another. The stomach aches and constipation were treated by my GP with some powder that made me feel sick, the tiredness and aches were put down to old age. A routine blood test was carried out and I was then asked to go back in for another, more extensive test.

My GP gave me the results of that blood test, telling me that my PSA should be around ten and it was actually four thousand seven hundred. She informed me that the level was such that I definitely had prostate cancer and there was no maybe attached to anything. I was placed on a pathway with the NHS and every date on that pathway has been reached and achieved, and the NHS have been brilliant in that respect.

First meeting was with a urologist who gave me an injection in the belly which was a slow release drug that would last a month, and was designed to stop production of testosterone which the cancer was apparently feeding on. Subsequent bone scans showed that the cancer had gone through my lymph system and had attacked bone, particulary in the shoulders, and that, to me, explained my aching shoulders, especially when driving. A full body scan then showed that the cancer had not reached organs.

Being quickly transferred to an oncologist, she changed my monthly jabs to three monthly jabs in the stomach, and placed me on three monthly blood tests and some very expensive tablets that I couldn't have afforded if it wasn't for the free NHS. These tablets attack the testosterone that is already attached to the cancer cells, starving them, and along with the jabs to the belly, my testosterone was getting lower and lower.

Over a period of around a year my PSA dropped from the thousands into the hundreds then ten, then nought point five and as I write it's nought point three. My oncologist wants it at nought point one which she would deem to be negligable.

All of this hormone treatment has side effects. Hot flushes or hot flashes are a minor inconvenience and happen to me usually while I am sitting, either driving, where my heat can mist up the windows, or watching telly where shirt-flapping cools me down. Women who find about this have little sympathy.

The biggest side effect for me is a shrinking undercarriage. If you think about it, a youngster, and my grandson who I fish with was in that category, reaches a state of puberty where his body floods with testosterone, his voice deepens and his undercarriage grows. As this happened with my grandson, I explained to him that I was going in reverse and at some point we had crossed over when he was becoming larger and I was becoming smaller due to my lack of testosterone.

The treatment also leaves me sometimes out of breath when walking, frustrating for someone who, years ago, completed ten full marathons and hundreds of half-marathons. Still, the way I look at it is that breathlessness is that it's better than not breathing at all.

Those that read my other blog posts will know that I am an author and recently have taken up angling with my grandson who does most of the lifting and carrying work. Hence the books on this site, in the menu under fishing books where I describe not being able to fly abroad, my family went, so I fished in Cornwall. Flying was no problem and insurance wasn't looked into, but specialists wanted to know more about my body before lanning a journey months in advance. Fishing Lures for Prostate Problems is that book. Other blog posts on fishing will, one day, form a book and join that fishing books page.

Being a prolific author, I started to write a novel (see home page) where the female lead character in the book has just come out of an aggressive relationship and I then chose a male lead character who had the same symptoms and side effects as me but at a much younger age. Hopefully, slipping these things into novels will help spread knoledge, understanding, and more chatter among men, and if the books are read by women, maybe they can convince male partners to get tested.