The Diagnosis

Returning from my two week holiday in early June I am reminded of the situation by a letter from the hospital inviting me to a meeting to discuss my biopsy.

Unbelievably during the holiday I have hardly thought about it, comforted by the biopsy consultant who had told me the odds were in my favour. My prostate gland looked healthy and I shouldn't worry.

Now however the appointment brought me back to earth with a bump. If it was clear they would phone me I reasoned.

Two days later as my name was called I noticed a McMillan nurse waiting to greet me with the Urologist. This looks bad I thought.

The Urologist wasted no time and informed me my biopsy had revealed cancer on one side of my prostate gland. This had a Gleason score of 3+4=7. I will explain the Gleason score in a separate post.

In this situation it is like a bomb going off in the room. The doctor said a great deal but I remember very little. The McMillan nurse is present because if it is bad news the patient rarely remembers much apart from the word cancer.

Fortunately my partner was able to write it all down.

In reassuring tones I was told that I had a medium aggressive cancer and owing to lack of symptoms it was thought it was caught early. However before discussing treatment options some scans would be necessary to determine if it had spread to my bones or lymph glands.

If it was in my bones it was not treatable and if it was in my lymph glands it could spread to other organs.

Then I was given leaflets for the two main treatment options Radiotherapy and complete removal of the prostate gland, radical prostatectomy. A third option active surveillance or watchful waiting was also discussed, in which you just monitor the cancer but it was quickly ruled out as I was too young.

Prostate cancer is actually a very slow growing cancer and unknown to most people autopsies on men over seventy from road traffic accidents has revealed most men die with prostate cancer. Because it is so slow in developing it is usually something else which the person dies from rather than the cancer. Therefore active surveillance can be a viable option for a lot of people.

Armed with this imformation a follow up appointment was made to discuss the result of the scans and treatment options from there.