There is a man in the news this week - Darren, 53, sells houses in a country town in Victoria, Australia. He went in for a blood test expecting to be told to exercise and eat less takeaway. It came back as prostate cancer. Here is the part that stuck with me. He only had that test on his check-up because his father and his uncle had both had it. That family history is the only reason he thought to ask. Without it, he probably waits, like most of us do. If a friend had not pointed at my trousers in an airport years ago and told me it was my prostate, I would have kept ignoring mine too. Somebody has to be the one who says the words. Most men have no idea what actually runs in their own family. Nobody ever talked about it. The uncle who "had trouble with his waterworks" and left it at that. So my question for you: do you know your family history with the prostate? Did anyone ever actually tell you, or did you have to go digging? I want to hear how you found out - it might be the nudge someone else here needs. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

A man in Victoria, Canada, put his story in the news this week for Awareness Month. His father had prostate cancer. One of his older brothers did too. So he was watching his PSA in his regular bloodwork. The numbers started going the wrong way. He had a biopsy and it came back negative. Now here is the part that got me. He did not stop there. A year later he had another one, and that one found the cancer. Early enough to have choices about what to do next. I have been reading this stuff for sixteen years and I still think this is the least-taught lesson in the whole subject. Everybody talks about getting tested. Almost nobody talks about what happens after a result that says you are fine. One PSA number on its own does not tell you much. It is the direction over time that says something. And a negative biopsy answers the question for that day, not for the next ten years. I am not a doctor. But imy brother had prostate cancer, as far aas I know my father did not, so I want somebody looking at my numbers as a line on a chart, not as a single dot. It is what we need to do. Sure we need to get men to go and get checked, but they need to know that one negative result does not mean stop looking. Question for you all, and I am genuinely curious. Has anyone here had a clear result and then found something later? Or been told everything was fine and had a nagging feeling it was not finished? I would like to know how common that is in this room. https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

I read a piece out of Ireland this weekend. Geároid Bradley, 74, retired chemical engineer. His prostate cancer was found in March 2023 while he was in hospital for something else entirely. Advanced by the time anyone saw it. He was told he had months. He is still here, three years on, sitting on the board of Prostate Cancer Ireland and helping set up peer support with the Beacon Hospital and the Marie Keating Foundation. He was honest about the early days. Devastated. Cried. Said he felt he was on borrowed time and very isolated, and that his wife and family were devastated too. That is the bit most men will not say out loud. Then he said two things. "Don't be afraid to ask, it's not unmanly to ask for help." And, talking about bringing partners into treatment decisions: "It's actually manly to ask because there's two people going on this journey." I have been saying a version of that for years and never as well as he did. The reason a man will not talk about his prostate is that he thinks it is a referendum on being a man. It is not. It is a gland with a problem, like a thyroid or a kidney. Glands have problems. We deal with them. He also said he tries to take five minutes of self-pity a day and then get on with it. I like that a lot. Five minutes is generous and it has a bell on the end of it. So, question for the group, and I want the honest answer rather than the tidy one. When you got your news, or when he got his, was your partner in the room? Or did you go in on your own and come out repeating half of what you thought you heard? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

A man in Lancashire went for a PSA test last week. His grandfather died of prostate cancer. His father was diagnosed last year at stage four. He is a local MP, which is the only reason it made the news. Two men in his own family, and he still had not been, and the only reason this made the news is because he is a public figure. Think about that. How many men who are not public figures, have the same statistics in their own families? I am not having a go at him. He went, and he is now telling other men to go, which is a good deal more than most of us manage. What struck me is how ordinary it is. Family history is about as loud a signal as this thing gives you, and men still do not act on it until it is standing in their own front room. He also said that in his county, one in four men are not being tested at all. The other line I keep coming back to came from a local support group in the same piece. They have been running tests for ten years and have done over three thousand of them. Three thousand. One group of volunteers. That is what it looks like when a handful of people decide to get on with it rather than wait for the system to sort itself out. Which is roughly why this place exists. So a question for you all, and I would rather have honest answers than tidy ones. Do you actually know your own family history for this? Father, brother, uncles, grandfathers. And if you do not, is there someone still alive you could ask this week? I would venture to say there is..... https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about

The BBC has run a piece on Cheltenham General Hospital, which is now the NHS centre of excellence for a water jet procedure for an enlarged prostate in the south west of England. Fine. Good for them. But the bit that stopped me was not the machine. One of the men in it is 67, from north Cornwall. He had lived with an enlarged prostate for twenty years, and twenty years of water infections along with it. Twenty years. The operation took less than an hour and he was home the next day. Another is 57. He wore a catheter for close to a year first, and had already given up running and cycling. I read that and thought about how easily I let my own symptoms slide. I assumed I was just getting older. Slower stream, up in the night, a few drops where they should not be. It was never a decision to ignore it. I simply never framed it as a thing that could be dealt with. That is the trap. Not a lack of treatment. A lack of anybody saying out loud that this is fixable, and here are your options. I am not a doctor and I am not pushing any procedure. What I am pushing is the appointment. That is the key - when you have or see someone who needs help - get them to go to a doctor. Do not let them wait. So, honestly, and I would rather have awkward answers than tidy ones: how long did you carry your symptoms before you said them out loud to anyone? And what finally made you say them? https://www.skool.com/prostate-paladin-4886/about