Grant

Age at interview: 70

Age at diagnosis: 65

Brief Outline:

Grant was prompted to visit the GP because of problematic urination; his PSA score led to a DRE and bone scan and a diagnosis of 'incurable' metastasized prostate cancer in January 2007. He has received hormone treatment and radiotherapy.

Background:

Grant is a married retired computer consultant and his ethnic background is Caucasian.

More about me...

In 2006 Grant experienced frequent night time urination and other urinating difficulties. He thought this might be a problem and so he visited the doctor who took a blood sample for a PSA test. The test score was 26 and after a digital rectal examination and a biopsy he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in January 2007. Four years earlier he had had a PSA test which returned a score of 6 but had been advised by a female doctor that it was not something to worry about. He had a bone scan before going on an once-in-a-lifetime holiday. The results of this were given to him on holiday at which point he was advised to go to a hospital and begin treatment immediately as the prostate cancer had spread to his bones. He had no knowledge about prostate cancer and had no idea of what this meant in terms of his life expectancy. On return from holiday he had an MRI scan and other tests and full treatment was started. Grant understands that his illness is not curable and that it is a case of controlling it for as long as possible. Both he and his wife were in turmoil as it really made them sit up and think about the rest of their lives. He informed himself about prostate cancer through the internet and was glad after six months to eventually find the bulletin board of The Prostate Cancer Charity. While initially he had intermittent hormone therapy, where ideally there is a break in treatment until the PSA begins to rise again, it became clear that he had to have continuous treatment. About 18 months ago he began to have problems with his left hip and discovered that this was due to the prostate cancer spreading to his pelvis. He had radiotherapy on his pelvis which he describes as ‘magic’ as the pain just went away. However, in the months before this interview the pain returned again only this time in both hips. Presently, 4½ years after diagnosis his cancer has spread to both hips, his spine, ribs and skull. 

Interview conducted in 2011 by Anne Montgomery.

Grant has received a great deal of support from others via the message board on the Prostate Cancer Charity.

Well I'm a bit of an internet freak in the sense that I, you know I like to know about things if I’m going to be, if I’m going to be involved in something I want to know about it, I don’t like to sort of launch myself into things where I don't know what’s going on, okay, so on to the internet I go and start looking up and after about six, it took about six months before I found The Prostate Cancer Charity as it happens, and their message board, their bulletin board.

 

So tell me about different support groups then that you may be involved in?

 

Okay, well the hospital that I go to actually has a Maggie centre, if I’m allowed to mention those, which was, it’s a place for people with any sort of cancer can go to, anyway they also set up a prostate cancer support group which I went to just for a little while, but since I was already on the Prostate Cancer [Charity] message board things, I didn’t really feel I got anything out of that, and possibly didn’t contribute.

 

So anyway they have a prostate cancer support group as well, but I didn’t really feel I was getting much out of it, because I was already a member of the prostate cancer bulletin board, message boards, and I didn’t really feel I could contribute an awful lot either, because at the time, perhaps because it was a start up group and people were mostly new, they were new diagnoses, so at that stage they were in shock and all the rest of it, and it probably helped them, I hope it helped them, but if you like, I’d got over that particular hurdle, so I stopped going to that, but the the prostate cancer message board is where I find, you know, most support, I try to contribute when people first sign on, because you know, they generally are in some sort of shock, and you know, it’s good to be able to say to them, you know, “look we’ve all, we’ve been through this stage, you know, it was hell and we know it is but you know, I’m four and a half years down the road so, and its spread to my bones”, if the person, has spread to their bones, you know, “and I’m still very fit”, you know, and one feels that probably helps, one hopes that helps people, okay, and also you know, there’s a very wide range of people, if you have an issue, I mean, when I started having my hip issues, and things like, I posted questions about my own condition, and you know, got helpful replies back, when I, when I decided I’d try a trial, okay, you know, that was very useful because some of the people were on the trial and were able to feed back, unfortunately I was not eligible, and so on, so that I found the most... I spend a lot of, I must confess I probably spent more time than I should on it, I probably spend getting on for an hour a day on it perhaps, seeing who’s posted and perhaps replying to people.