Talking won’t cure prostate cancer, but it helps dispel men’s fears about the disease

Ihad prostate cancer. By the time you read this I hope that an excellent surgeon and his team at the Galway Clinic, along with a robotic surgical machine called Da Vinci and the National Treatment Purchase Fund, will have conspired to rid me of the offending organ and its disease.

Aside from feeling sorry for myself, I should be on the road to recovery.

It has been a long enough road to the place where I find myself. You might remember a few months ago I took to bemoaning the paucity of public toilets in the country. Well my need for such oases of relief was driven by the pressure imposed on the waterworks department by an enlarged prostate.

I’ll try to explain the phenomenon in layman’s terms. Let me warn you, the physiology might be patchy and the metaphors may be dodgy but you will get my drift. The prostate gland is about the size of a walnut or a golf ball and is located under the bladder on the pelvic floor. Its function is to secrete a fluid which contributes to the volume of semen. (Don’t reach for the holy water just yet, this as racy as the column gets.)

The urinary pipe (urethra) goes through the prostate and merges with two ejaculatory ducts.

For some men, when they stop growing in their late teens, their prostate, like their nails and their hair, continues to grow. This expanding prostate puts pressure on the urinary pipe and makes one feel the need to strain the spuds at every turn.

I have known for about ten years that I have an enlarged prostate and over that time developed a sixth sense for unofficial pit-stops, with an eagle eye for spotting gaps in ditches from any distance, even when travelling at high speed.

Malign

They say that when travellers in the desert become dehydrated they hallucinate and sometimes the atmospheric conditions make the desert appear as if it is covered in water. As I travelled the roads desperately seeking a quiet spot for my ablutions, mirages would take the form of a gap in the hedge, a five-bar gate and a thick hawthorn bush. That combination was the oasis of oases for a man in my condition.

From the beginning I was told my enlarged prostate was benign but a comprehensive biopsy taken before Christmas told a different tale.

In the depths of my nether regions the benign had turned malign. The options in relation to treatment include surgery and radio-therapy; I opted for surgery.

Since being diagnosed with cancer of the prostate I have been more than happy to talk about it. Cancer won’t be cured by silence, by whispering under cupped hands or by nods and winks. Obviously it won’t be cured by talk, but the mystery, the fear and the taboos will be dispelled by the fresh air of chat.

I have had some great conversations with men since this was diagnosed. Men I know well and some I hardly know at all would come up and talk about their struggles and triumphs dealing with the disease.

We talked frankly about things like continence and incontinence, erectile function, erectile dysfunction and spoke together of the fears that cling to our temples in the dark of night.

Men have spoken about things they won’t speak to their wives or partners about, and I have talked to them about the same. We discovered among one another a great gentleness and a brotherhood in the face of uncertainty, an uncertainty that’s like quicksand under the foundations of what we think makes men of us.

I have found sisters too, including my blood sister, who has been to the edge and back with cancer and has become my cancer buddy. We have talked one another through it.

And I have been steadied and grounded by strong women I meet who ensured that I don’t catastrophise and turn my passing affliction into a epic version of the man-flu.

One day recently I was out for a walk and looking suitably glum when a neighbour came alongside me in her car.

She let down the passenger window and continued to drive as I walked. “I hear you have trouble in the nether regions,” she shouted.

“I have,” I answered “Show me a man that hasn’t,” she said, “you’ll be grand.”

All will be well.

The uncertainty is like quicksand under the foundations of what we think makes men of us