Page 16 - COBH EDITION 18th OCTOBER DIGITAL VERSION

‘Don’t wait for symptoms of prostate cancer – they don’t always ap-
pear’ - Trevor Laffan
I wrote a piece a few months ago about my brush with
prostate cancer and as you can imagine, I was happy
to see the back of 2018. On the positive side though,
the response to that article was enormous and I know
a couple of guys who had themselves checked as a
result of reading it, so that’s good.

The whole point of the exercise was to advise as many
as possible about the importance of having their PSA
checked and the need to be proactive where their
health is concerned. There’s no point in waiting for
symptoms because they might never appear and that’s
important to remember. Just ask John Wall.

He is a 48-year-old Air Traffic Controller and father of three from Quin, Co Clare,
and a couple of years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and unfortunately
for him, it has become a terminal illness. He has been very active on social media
over the last 12 months or so, highlighting the need for men to get themselves
checked.

It’s been 2 years since his diagnosis and he says that while it is a terminal diagnosis
for him, it could have been avoided quite easily if he had had the sense to have a
simple blood test annually. He should have had his PSA checked and he feels that all
30-something males out there should be visiting their GP once a year.

John’s advice is not to wait; “More often than not we wait for a problem rather than
pre-empting one before we make that visit. Don’t make the same mistake I did, it
could save your life.”
After I had my own surgery, my surgeon confirmed to me that we were right to
move when we did because the cancer was beginning to migrate beyond the pros-
tate. That was an endorsement of my decision to take matters into my own hands
when faced with the prospect of delays and becoming part of the HSE statistics.
There were 700,000 people on hospital waiting lists at that time and I was one of
those. I was in a hurry to get things moving but I didn’t get that sense of urgency
from the system I was stuck in. Looking back on it now, if I had adopted that same
laid-back approach that I encountered, I could very well have ended up in serious
trouble and I’ll give you one example.
After receiving my diagnosis, I was advised to have an isotope bone scan to deter-
mine if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate gland. That was the middle of
August and I was given a date for this scan in the CUH for the 5th November. Add
on another few weeks to get the result of that and I was facing a wait of about three
months.
When I questioned the reason for this delay, I was told that it was due to a large
queue in the CUH. I wasn’t prepared to wait that long, so I went to the Bon Secours
Hospital and had it done within a week. When I asked what kind of a waiting-list