Flembo

You will find a great deal of helpful information here in the form of the Toolkit that you can download. Reading this information before your appointment might help you to formulate questions that you might want to ask on the day.

It's all a bit of a shock for you both but once you have a diagnosis if it is PCa you will then find that there are many treatment paths available.

Hopefully you both will find this site to be a great source of information both from the nurses that you can phone or from others on this site who have shared your experiences. In the meantime you have to be patient until your tests are done and I have found that it doesn't pay to make any assumptions about test results. Wait until you get them and then act on them.

Keep us up to speed with how you get on.

To be positive, it is good that you requested a PSA test.

After your visit to urology, they may send you for an MRI scan, which may then rule out the need for a biopsy altogether.

If a biopsy is required, those results will tell if you have an aggressive cancer (a “tiger”) or a very slow growing cancer (a “kitten”) which requires no treatment at all, just regular checks.

You may well have a benign prostate enlargement, so try not to worry too much until you have seen the urologist.

The “urgency” is a government policy under the “two week rule”, which means everyone who might have cancer are referred to a specialist within that time frame, so please don’t read anything sinister into that regarding your case.

Do let us know how you get on and the best of luck!

If you click on our names you will see our “life histories” in most cases.

I find it very galling that my wife has had two reminders in the last nine months from the GP to go for a cervical smear test for cervical cancer, despite her having her cervix and everything else taken away during a total hysterectomy three years ago.

She reminded the surgery of that after the first invitation, but still a second one arrived.

In contrast, no-one invited me for a PSA test, and it was more by luck than judgement that one GP ticked the PSA box on my annual blood test form last November resulting in a PSA of 16 odd. My first and only one was back in 2010 when it was 2.2.

Sexual discrimination!

Anyway, the Professor of Urology I saw in London yesterday says my cancer is “completely curable” at this stage with a radical prostatectomy, so that’s good news for me.

With the experience of losing your second wife it is no surprise that you are feeling anxious. However these are 2 very different types of cancer.

Base PSA levels are age related. At 73 the recommended base level to be offered an MRI scan and biopsy is 6.5, so your PSA of 8 is quite low and just above this.

If it is PCa, at this PSA level then it is most likely to be curable.

I would say you are definitely lucky to have had the PSA test, and if it is PCa, to have found it found it so early.

Keep us posted on how you get on.

Tempted to say it's all sweet talk, but my (Template) Biopsy was completely pain free, and no problems afterwards apart from a blocked bladder, so had a catheter for a week.

Friend told me his TRUS biopsy was like being flicked with a rubber band, so no worries there.