29 Jul What support is available for Torbay residents with prostate cancer?

Regular listeners to the weekly Community Champions Show on Torbay Radio* will know that prostate cancer and testing for it are causes that are close to my heart.

Despite mounting pressure for testing over several decades, it remains something of a lottery around the country, with doctors able to refuse a test, despite a law that says you can ask for one.

Only two weeks ago, Radio Four broadcaster Ed Stourton died from it and a few weeks before, another broadcaster, Dermot Monaghan. Both had been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer, meaning it had spread.

World-class athlete Sir Chris Hoy was diagnosed with stage four in 2023, and he announced in 2024 that he had been given between two and four years to live.

Jeremy Clarkson was diagnosed during the filming of his last series of Clarkson’s Farm and was, thankfully, successfully treated. Before him, a whole host of famous names have shared their diagnosis – Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Stephen Fry, Sir Ian McKellen, Rod Stewart, and Nelson Mandela, to name but a few.

But what that last list of names had in common is that they were all tested and all successfully treated, which you would think would herald a nationwide testing programme to prevent unnecessary deaths

The harsh truth is that it can strike any man, generally over the age of 45; in fact, the statistics are horrendous – 12,000 deaths a year, with one in eight men suffering from it (one in four if you are black).

And yet the National Screening Committee (NSC) have refused to give widespread testing the go-ahead, and as I learned on my radio show they have used the same arguments against it – that it will lead to overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment – as they originally used to refuse blanket breast screening until 1988.

A petition of 100,000 names has now gone to Parliament, which will hopefully spark a debate on the subject in the hope that the NSC’s  recommendation can be overturned, because these are people’s lives we are dealing with.

Chris (R) along with Ian (M) from the Torbay Prostate Support Association, in the Torbay Radio studio with David (L)

People like Chris Marchant, who spoke movingly about his journey with prostate cancer when he appeared on the show. He was one of the lucky ones; his doctor wanted to know more when he told her he was getting up to go to the toilet a lot at night. Again, he was lucky; he had symptoms; people often do not.

He had a PSA test, which he refers to as his personal whistleblower, because it showed raised antigens, which in turn triggered an MRI scan that revealed significant lesions on his prostate and a biopsy was then performed.

In his own words: “The next few months had the darkest of clouds over us as a family. Some tests brought good news. Another test was inconclusive and I had to wait a further three months for a further test to resolve what my future would be. I put all this in a box, as best I could.

“A few days after Christmas I had a call from one of my cancer nurses. My cancer had not spread. As I told my wife I broke down. My tears flowed. I guess my strength wasn’t needed in that moment and I let all the pain I was challenging go.”

The news meant that Chris had a choice about whether to pursue treatment and the answer was conclusive. He immediately started a hormone treatment and 35 sessions of radio therapy followed. There were good times and bad times, but he remembers clearly the last day of treatment:

“The sense of debt I felt to all who had helped me through. The love from my family, support from my friends, the kindness and professionalism of NHS staff. And it all began with a PSA test. In time, I came to realise that my cancer had brought me to another community. Friends who have survived prostate cancer.”

The friends he speaks of are mostly connected to the Torbay Prostate Support Association, which charitably funds PSA testing in the Bay.  The next session IS in September. Keep an eye on their website or join the Facebook group for further information. Tests cost the association £30, but if you can’t afford it, they have the mantra ‘wealth should not be a barrier to health.’

*The Community Champions Show on Torbay Radio is moving to Mondays between 1 and 3pm, from Monday 10th August. Please tune in.