I have been doing Movember for a few years now off and on. It was Philip Bloom whose campaigns brought this cause to my attention and I fundraise as part of his team. In previous years it was because I was convinced by the aims of Movember but it was still an abstract concept.
This year things are a bit different. My father’s PSA levels were high at his annual checkup at the beginning of this year. He was referred for further tests. This news hit us all hard, especially my Dad. Any mention of the big C is always scary. I thought it is worth telling our story for any who may face the same situation.
We had already hit the first problem with prostate cancer - diagnosis. The PSA test is not very conclusive. The doctors will talk about “cause for concern”. The PSA suggests that there might be an issue but a biopsy is required to confirm it. Even a biopsy is not a guaranteed indicator. This is because the process of acquiring the sample is not just a sample in the medical sense but also in the statistical sense. If the sample is taken from an infected area then you can have reasonable certainty that you require treatment. However, if it doesn’t then you don’t know if you are clear or whether the biopsy just missed an infected area.
There was a touch of serendipity in our case. A few weeks before my father had his news I was listening to the radio when a story came on about prostate cancer. I am not a big fan of medical stories but, on this occasion, I kept listening because of my experience with Movember. The program was talking about a new diagnosis technique involving using an MRI scan to target areas on the prostate that looked more likely to be infected. This has the added advantage that it looks at the prostate more holistically, where as the traditional biopsy is limited by the angle of entry.
I told my father about this so he had the opportunity to ask his specialist about it. The specialist was familiar with this approach but it is still regarded as experimental in the UK so is not done under the NHS.
My father’s MRI scan showed some areas which were “cause for concern” so a multi-parametric biopsy was set based on the MRI results. The biopsy was supposed to be an overnight stay in hospital, mainly so my Dad had support for getting used to the catheter required. In the end it turned out to be a fair bit longer than that due to some conflicts with some of my Dad’s existing medications and some over-hydration. Once my father was home there was nothing to do but wait for the results come through. Even this isn’t a black and white decision. The doctors classify the result in terms of risk. Much of what they found was either clear or low risk. There was one patch that was classified as medium risk and therefore “cause for concern”. My father was given four options. The first was to leave things alone and monitor the levels. The second option was radio therapy. The third was surgery on the prostate. The final option, and the one my father elected to follow, was a high intensity ultrasound treatment.
This meant another trip back to hospital for an overnight stay. Fortunately, we were much better prepared with the medications this time and everything went to plan and my Dad was back out on schedule. So the actual treatment proved easier than the biopsy and was as a simple as you could hope when there is a catheter involved.
Several weeks following the treatment, Dad had to have another MRI scan to check for progress. These all came back positive. The final stage followed later and that was a retest of the PSA levels. I am glad to report that these had dropped considerably and my father’s specialist was delighted with the results.
Of course, we will never know what the outcomes would have been if we had taken different treatment choices down the line but we are very happy with the outcome we had. I like to think that Movember had a little part to play in the chain of events that informed our journey. We would also like to thank all the staff at Yale Hospital Wrexham who were involved in my father’s treatment.
Our advice to anyone who finds themselves on a similar path is to talk to your doctors and make sure you are well informed on the treatments available to you. Also to take comfort in our story that you can have a positive outcome especially if you get an early diagnosis. It is for this reason I will continue to work for Movember for its work in raising awareness in the need to get tested.
The tache below is a link to my Movember page. Please donate for this very worthy cause.
As part of Team Bloom 'Tache you can enter Phil's competition where there are some brilliant prizes for the filmmaker or photographer in your life. If you don't have one then there is always me ;) Follow this link to see the competition rules and don't wait too long. I don't mind if you donate through me or directly as long as Movember gets the benefit.
