{"id":7436,"date":"2022-11-16T15:29:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T15:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/?p=7436"},"modified":"2022-11-30T08:32:57","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T08:32:57","slug":"im-one-of-the-lucky-ones-for-listening-to-my-body-and-finding-cancer-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/mens-healthcare\/im-one-of-the-lucky-ones-for-listening-to-my-body-and-finding-cancer-early\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m one of the lucky ones for listening to my body and finding cancer early"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"background-color:#f2f2f2;color:#32373c\" class=\"wp-block-atomic-blocks-ab-profile-box round ab-font-size-14 ab-block-profile ab-profile-columns\"><div class=\"ab-profile-column ab-profile-content-wrap\"><h2 class=\"ab-profile-name\" style=\"color:#32373c\">Paul Ferris (pictured above)<\/h2><p class=\"ab-profile-title\" style=\"color:#32373c\">Men&#8217;s Health Forum Ireland Ambassador<\/p><div class=\"ab-profile-text\"><\/div><ul class=\"ab-social-links\"><\/ul><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It was the summer of 2016. I was on a holiday of a lifetime when I found out about my prostate cancer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>I was watching Coldplay in Concert. That day, I had been writing one of the final chapters of my memoir \u2018The Boy on the Shed.\u2019 An unexpected heart attack three years prior had focused my mind on putting my life to date down on paper. It was all going so well until I noticed I was getting up in the night to pee a little more often than usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Know when to see a doctor<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I knew not to take any chances. I made an appointment with my doctor. One palpation of my prostate later, I was having a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test. My PSA was high. I was put on a fast-track programme to see a urologist. I got a letter telling me to ignore the first one I\u2019d received, and that another one would follow. I did ignore it \u2014 for four months!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>It was all going so well until I noticed I was getting up in the night to pee a little more often than usual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I assumed I wasn\u2019t a priority and waited. I\u2019d all but forgotten about it until I made my way to the toilet at the Coldplay concert. I stood at the urinal and waited \u2014 nothing came. I couldn\u2019t tell you what Coldplay sang for the rest of the night. My mind was elsewhere. It was on the fact that something was very wrong and wondering where my letter was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-catching-it-early\"><strong>Catching it early<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I called the hospital when I got home. I had my appointment. I had my biopsy \u2014 I had prostate cancer. I opted to have a prostatectomy. I hoped that would cure it. It didn\u2019t. There was a positive margin. I was back in the hospital a year later for radiotherapy and hormone treatment.&nbsp; I\u2019m four years clear now. I live with the side effects of my treatments \u2014 incontinence, erectile dysfunction, infertility and penile shrinkage (indeed!). Sometimes, that gets me down. Then, I remind myself that I\u2018m one of the lucky ones. My cancer was caught early enough, even if it did take a ruined Coldplay concert to get me back on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was the summer of 2016. I was on a holiday of a lifetime when I found out about my prostate cancer. I was watching Coldplay in Concert. That day, I had been writing one of the final chapters of my memoir \u2018The Boy on the Shed.\u2019 An unexpected heart attack three years prior had &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/mens-healthcare\/im-one-of-the-lucky-ones-for-listening-to-my-body-and-finding-cancer-early\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":7556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5707],"tags":[5762],"class_list":["post-7436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mens-healthcare","tag-mens-healthcare-2022"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com\/cdn-site.mediaplanet.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/94\/2022\/11\/07210602\/Image3-600x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com\/cdn-site.mediaplanet.com\/app\/uploads\/sites\/94\/2022\/11\/07210602\/Image3-600x600.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Carolina Galbraith Duarte","author_link":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/author\/carolinagalbraithduarte\/"},"vicky_index_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7436"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7562,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7436\/revisions\/7562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthnews.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}