I have never told this part on its own, because there is nothing dramatic in it. Sixteen years ago, once I understood roughly what I was dealing with, I did two things. I made some small changes, and I made sure my PSA got checked. That was about the extent of it for years, because back then there was almost nothing else to go on. Made sure is the operative part. I had to be the one who made sure. The PSA Test was not an automatic part of my bloodwork. I thought about that this week, reading about a man in Phoenix called Randy. Months of chiropractic for a back that would not settle, and when he finally got in front of his doctor he was handed muscle relaxants. He took them, and then he asked for a PSA test as well. That request is the reason he found out. Sixteen years and an ocean apart, and the same small unglamorous act did the work in both cases. Not courage. Not research. Just saying the words in the room. I am not a doctor and I will not tell anybody what their number means. But I will say this plainly: it is likely that nobody is going to check this gland on your behalf if you never mention it. And before anyone writes in about it - his back was almost certainly nothing to do with his prostate. A bad back is usually a bad back. The request is the story, not the backache. So I am curious, and I would rather have real answers than polite silence on this one. Did you ask for your first PSA test, or did somebody offer it to you? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

Sixteen years ago a friend told me in an airport that the problem I did not know I had, was my prostate. What I did after that is less dramatic than people expect. I looked into it, made some small changes, and made sure to get my PSA checked. That was about it for years. There was almost nothing to read back then, so there was not much else to do with it. But I did check. And I kept checking. I read about a man this week, 75 years old, who spent his career in operating rooms and assisted in more than twelve thousand heart surgeries. He moved onto a veterans' health service in the United States and assumed his yearly blood work covered his prostate. It did not, and nobody mentioned that it did not. His reading had been 4 in 2022. When he finally pushed for another one it came back at 26, and it had already left the prostate. He is not a careless man. He is a man who assumed. That is the part that sat with me. Assuming is the thing I have spent sixteen years watching cost men time they could have had. Not fear, not stubbornness. Just a quiet reasonable assumption that somebody else was handling it. So a question for this community, and I would rather have honest answers than tidy ones. Have you ever actually seen the PSA figure on your own results? Or do you only remember being told that everything was fine? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

Sixteen years ago my problem was that there was nothing to read. A friend told me in an airport that I had a prostate issue. I had no idea. I went looking and found medical journals and almost nothing else. So I looked into it, made some small changes, got my PSA checked, and that was about it for years. There was nothing more to go on. That experience shaped how I think about all of this. And I have realised this week that it also misled me. Because I built Prostate Paladin on the idea that the missing thing is information. Find the clear answer, hand it over, job done. That was true for me in 2010. Then I read about a man called Johnathan Tuiasosopo in Washington State. Samoan, fit, 57 when he was diagnosed. Father died of cancer. More than one brother or sister died of cancer. Never had a screening. He had every piece of information I did not have. It did not move him. What moved him afterwards is the part that stuck with me. He started talking, at his church, on his rugby team, wherever it came up. And when he is talking to people who are wary of doctors, he sometimes calls them healers instead. One word swapped out, because that word gets a man through a door. Thirty years in geology taught me the data is only half the job. The other half is whether anybody acts on it. I had somehow forgotten that about my own subject. If you already know the family history, do the thing I would do. Write down the age your father or your brother was when their cancer was found. Then write down the date of your last PSA reading. One of those two numbers is usually missing, and that is the one to go and get. Then I want to ask you something, and I am genuinely curious rather than making a point. When somebody in your family finally did go and get checked, what actually tipped it? Was it a fact, or was it a person? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

Please extend a warm welcome to our newest members. Timothy Bright, @Timothy Bright , Lynne Vella, @Lynne Vella , Rodrigo Rios, @Rodrigo Rios , and Auli Takala, @Auli Takala I am very happy you have decided to join our community. Here we aim to spread awareness about the prostate as much as possible. Please introduce yourselves and share your story if you are comfortable doing so, or comment on an existing post that resonates with you, all are welcome. Thank you for being here and helping to spread prostate awareness. Please check out the classroom and Start Here to begin your prostate journey. Alex

I want to talk about a thing that happens in a quiet house. A man is told his prostate cancer has spread and cannot be cured. The appointment ends. Everyone drives home. And then at some point that evening, somebody in that family picks up a phone and types the question nobody said out loud in the room. I have done my share of late-night searching. Sixteen years ago a friend in an airport told me I had a prostate issue I knew nothing about, and when I went looking there was almost nothing to find. Now there is too much of it, and a lot of what comes up first is old. Figures came out in England this week covering 45,339 men whose prostate cancer had already spread. In 2015, 56 per cent of them died within three years. By 2022 it was 47 per cent. More than half now get past three years. So whatever that family found on the phone that night, it was the old arithmetic. One of the men in the reporting, Kevin Mortimer, 51, from Liverpool, said something I keep coming back to. He said it is a sobering reminder that behind every statistic is a man and his family facing a difficult future. He was told his cancer had spread to his bones and lungs and that it was terminal. Three years on it is undetectable. He is also the one who points out that he is a super responder and that not all men in his position would have had the same outcome. He says it himself, so I am not going to dress it up either. These are England figures and NHS England care, so if you are somewhere else the number on your screen will be a different one. What to do about it is the same everywhere. At the next appointment, ask whether combination treatment has been discussed for him, and ask for the answer to be written in his notes before anyone leaves the room. Has anyone here driven home from an appointment and then looked something up that frightened you more than the appointment did? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about