Can You Get It Up? My prostate cancer story

You can’t help wondering how much Uncle Gilbert is going to mess with your life. He wakes me in the night. He can do worse. This bad uncle made me realise the unexpected challenges, alarms, and the benefits. Before the diagnosis, I never expected to experience good.

I’ve grown more alert and thankful for daily positives. You find out who your friends are. Laughter is definitely welcome, but I need more good prostate cancer jokes! Making my decisions is easier. I decided I would write a blog about my story a few hours after the consultant told me the news. You can find out about the mechanics of treatment and symptoms fairly easily. Information about having it is scarcer.

The fast approaching surgery invokes uncertainty about the actual outcomes. This despite the high rate of recovery from this procedure. How serious will my side effects be? What will change?

Today it made me think of my good uncle Billy, who is 101, hail and hearty, and a survivor of the WW2 Battle Of Arnhem. This week in 1944, he parachuted down into Nazi occupied Holland and survived a grim and bloody battle. After days of hand-to-hand combat, he and a few others were close to the famous bridge. Taken prisoner by the Germans, I wondered how he felt about his freedom. What uncertainty flashed through his mind? Whatever it was, he determined he would survive and keep laughing.

Prostate cancer seems to terrify a lot of men into silence. What is its impact on your life and those around you?? Before last May, I had a sketchy idea. I soon found there is a good deal of mystery and mythology about the condition, especially among men, which stokes fear, embarrassment and shame.

A couple of months ago a friend who knew about my diagnosis said, as we arrived at a dinner, he was sorry to hear about my news. He then stalled a little awkwardly and said, ‘I must ask. Can you still get it up?’

Taken aback, I laughed at what I thought might be a joke. A new one on me. After a moment, I realised despite his jocular approach, he really needed to know.

The cancers impact is a subject people are reluctant to discuss. In the initial months after May, I noticed that medics and the support community prioritised plumbing. They concentrated on physical symptoms, tests and the details of the various treatments, not the potential emotional, psychological issues or how this relates to identity.

Of course, breast cancer is also very common. Some women with breast and ovarian cancer worry about identity perceptions. For men, prostate cancer can alarm their notions about masculinity. I suspect that’s why it has historically been so taboo.

My answer to my friend’s question at the dinner was, ‘Yes’.

However, it’s a complex subject. Things can change, and it varies on the particular stage of your cancer and treatment needed.

Another friend’s wife told me her husband, a close friend, had already had this cancer. It was a surprise, but it was not the first time I had heard a friend had already had the disease. They only told me when I admitted my diagnosis. They had never mentioned it before.

It seems different men deal with the condition in their own way. I said to my friend’s wife that I thought it embarrassed many men to admit they had it. She replied many had a sense of shame around the disease.

It is a subject clouded in mystery, fear, and I hope that by encouraging more awareness on that subject that might change.

Shadow is a word that still sends a shiver down my spine. It evokes alarm, however there cannot be a shadow without light, and one surprise of having cancer is the good things that emerge. For a start, I feel more grateful to be alive, more aware of things changing around me, light, nature, smells, tastes, colours, sounds, people’s moods and small acts of kindness.

There have been some dark moments as the test procedures unfolded over the summer. Uncle Gilbert is still noisy and I’ve had pain in my pelvis and lower back with occasional fever. As we waited for the biopsy results in August, after months of uncertainty, the outcome was unsettling but not unexpected.

I needed treatment to stop the cancer from spreading. To my surprise, the decision on which treatment routes I should take proved easier than anticipated. The surgeon carefully and expertly ran through my options and their risks and potential side effects.

I opted for surgery rather than radiotherapy, hormone or possibly chemo treatment. Although surgery is not without side effects. For instance, I will have to use a catheter for, we hope, about two weeks and then learn to control my flow. How difficult that is to learn varies. It is a concern, but so is anyone’s loss of freedom.

My uncle spent over a year in a prison of war camp in dire conditions, got very sick and didn’t give up or lose his generous helping of courage. He escaped. Got caught, and escaped again. Since then, he has had a full, active and interesting life. He is an inspiration to me and my family. A very funny man, he has never lost his sense of humour. I am still working on mine.

What do I do with a full catheter? Have you tried unplugging it and switching it back on?

In the next post: What happened with the surgery

If you have questions about my prostate cancer story, please ask them.

Read more about earlier in my prostate cancer story here: https://northofmynuts.co.uk/the-shadow/

For more information on the condition you can look at https://prostatecanceruk.org/