Welcome to the Men’s Room!
I had a prostate biopsy in May 2014. I was an NHS funded patient in the local Spire Hospital, but their biopsy machine had broken, and they couldn’t say when they would get the spare part. So I ended up self financing a trip to Harley Street where I had the biopsy done. All results were fine, and I was back to psa blood test monitoring every 6 months. Unfortunately a year later (mid 2015) I was diagnosed with MM, and underwent 8 cycles of VTD from July to Feb ’16. I didn’t tolerate the treatment too well. My immune system was flattened, but the FLChains reduced dramatically. I had no SCT. During the MM treatment, the prostate monitoring was put on a back burner until this summer. Where after a comprehensive biopsy in my local excellent NHS hospital I was found to have prostate cancer, but thankfully, not aggressive. My observation concerns the fact that very few men appear to have both MM and prostate cancer, which is a bit startling for the following reasons: The information pack I was given contains a Macmillan Booklet concerning prostate cancer tests. On page 15 it says that 50% of all men over 50 years, and 80% of all men over 80 years will have cancer cells in their prostate gland, but a lot of these nasties may be slow growing. Since there are over 2500 men diagnosed with MM each year in the UK, this means that somewhere between 1250 and 2000 men will have both MM and some form of prostate cancer existing simultaneously. My question is: I very seldom hear of anyone in this category (in fact only one that I know of – my old retired GP). Am I alone? Is there anyone out there? Can anyone suggest the reasons for this? All replies (including the lovely ladies that send posts to this website), would be welcome.
Best wishes to all…
Peter
