First Diagnosis – Richard

It sounds a very obvious thing to say, but being told ‘you have cancer’ is a shattering experience. Even 6 years later I vividly recall how disorientating the process was: a routine PSA test gave a high score which then triggered a rapid succession of GP appointments, referral to a specialist, MRI scan, biopsy and bone scan. In the course of a couple of weeks my world was turned upside down, and I found myself sitting in front of a registrar being told that yes, I did after all have prostate cancer.

It’s hard to overstate how it feels to be told that: to me it felt as though everything I thought my future life would hold had been torn up and flushed away. In my life to that point, everyone I’d known who had contracted cancer had died from it, and my instinctive perception was that cancer = death. Then, on top of this emotional atom bomb, I was asked to choose my form of treatment.

I’m neither an oncologist nor a urologist, I was just a frightened 53-year-old man who was desperately trying to make sense of the avalanche of information I’d been given and come to the ‘right’ decision when a very large part of me just wanted to crawl into a darkened room and hide under a blanket until it all went away. My wife was with me at all of my appointments and meetings and was an enormous support, but it was still an incredibly hard decision to make.

I was offered a choice between a prostatectomy or radiation beam therapy. We asked the surgeon registrar which he would recommend for a man with my particular diagnosis. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly influence your decision” he said, somewhat to my surprise. I understood that I was being given a choice, and why, but it was disconcerting to be asked to make such an important call without the support of a professional opinion. We then talked to the consultant oncologist about beam therapy who said bluntly: “Oh, I’d go for the surgery if I were you”, which did help me make up my mind.

Now, I didn’t want someone else to take the responsibility from me, but I wanted my decision to be informed and logical, and that’s hard when it’s the dreaded C-word, it’s your own life and treatment at stake, and just a few weeks earlier the possibility of all this had never entered your head.

Looking back, there are a few things that really stand out in my memory: the raw shock of the diagnosis; the sense that I’d lost control of my life as I was catapulted through a series of unfamiliar and unnerving hospital appointments; the sheer amount of information I was given and had to try and make sense of; and above all the starkness of having to make that decision.

I also didn’t realise that there would be support groups around that I could turn to for advice: it sounds odd, with hindsight, but the medical staff didn’t suggest anyone that I could approach for support and advice, and it simply didn’t occur to me at the time to find one. I later joined the Leeds Prostate Cancer Support Group, and have been asked if I would talk to guys going through the same process under the Buddy System, and it’s been great to do that. I would urge anyone who is given similar news do the same; just talking to other people who’ve been through the same mill is so helpful and makes a huge difference.