I went to my GP, I can remember the exact date, it was the 10th August 2009, I woke up with the most excruciating back ache, back pain, and I couldn’t go to work, I went to the doctor and said I’ve got this terrible pai, and she said, Oh, we’ll give you some painkillers and it should sort itself ou, that continued for a while, I went back to my doctor a number of times, during a three month period and saw different doctors, they all said the same, You’ve just got back problem, it will sort itself out, just take painkillers, take the cheapest you can ge, and they kept on that it was just a muscular skeletal problem, I asked if I could have an x-ray and they said, No, you don’t need an x-ra. I was seeing another, hospital doctor, in connection with my cholesterol levels, and on a regular monitoring, I mentioned to him that I had this back pain, he said, How are you, I said, I’m fine except that I’ve got this back pai, he said, Oh, go and have an x-ray, it’s probably nothing but it’s worth having a loo, so he sent me for an x-ray, I had an x-ray, and he said, Well it’s showing something, so I think you should have an MRI sca, at this time, the thought of prostate hadn’t entered my head at all, because all I had was this absolutely excruciating back pain.

I had the MRI scan on the Saturday, on the Thursday before, I went to see my GP, and said that I was having the scan, and said, Would you like to have a copy of it, and she said, No, I don’t want to see it, I’m (going to) send you to the local cottage hospital to have, to go to a physiotherapy clas. On the Sunday I then went off to work in Romania, on the Tuesday, I got a call from the hospital, saying, Can you please come in straight away, because we think there is something seriously wron, so I got a flight back to the UK, and went straight to the hospital, they admitted me immediately, they said, don’t go home, don’t go home, come straight from the airport, come straight in, because we’re very worrie, so I went in, and immediately they started tests, and after a few tests they said, Well, we think you’ve got prostate problems, prostate cancer, we think it’s metastasised into the bones, we need to do biopsies, on your bones, and your prostate just to make sur, they did that, and then I was diagnosed, that all happened towards the end of November 2009, so, I went to the hospital, as I was saying, I was in hospital, I had, I was diagnosed, and they started my treatment, and so because it’s metastasised into your bones, I’ve lost two vertebrae which have been completely replaced with tumours, it’s in my hips, it’s in my ribs, it’s in little bits of my abdomen. They said, We think the best treatment for you is hormone therap.

I was given Zoladex, but unfortunately I had a bad reaction to that, the skin on my face started peeling off, and it looked horrible, I think it looked worse than it was, but it wasn’t very nice, so the hospital, came to the concl-, decided, after lots of discussion, that the risks of me continuing to take Zoladex was too great, they thought I could have an anaphylactic shock, which would have been pretty serious, so I’m now on bicalutamide (Casodex), I take that, one pill in the evening, which is fine, when I was first diagnosed, I had a very aggressive form of prostate cancer it seems, but the treatment is working at the moment, very well, my PSA level is down to 0.06, which is very good, so I keep taking the medicine, and that is where I am at the moment, I have a few side effects from the medication, they’re not serious, the worse is that I’ve grown, sort of breasts, which are very tender, and I find them embarrassing, I wouldn’t, I don’t want to go to a swimming pool, because I feel that I look odd, soI keep my shirt on, and I wouldn’t want to take my shirt off, if I was say gardening in the front garden, I don’t want people to see, but apart from that, the treatment is working well, the side effects are very few, when I first started the treatment, because I had a combination of morphine for the pain, radiotherapy and steroids, I was very tired, but after a couple of months I came off the morphine, and I’m not on any painkillers now, and I don’t feel as tired as I did, I don’t think I feel any more tired than other people of my age, so I’m now at a stage where things have settled down, and hopefully for the foreseeable future I will just carry on taking the medicine, and hopefully, carry on living a pretty normal life.