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It is a year since the update of my book Surviving Prostate Cancer - One Man’s Journey - which means it is now eight years since my surgery, which takes me even further down the road and well past the yardsticks of full recovery. So, is there another update to add? It’s more a reflection on the journey.
Probably making it a unique journey.
For there would not be many who underwent surgery, of any kind, then wrote a book about it and then wrote a play about it in which they acted a character based on themselves. This guy then made a video of the play to be shown at seminars, to act as host and panel member for the follow-up discussion.
Yes, that probably is unique. Many would have done some or part of that but few would have done all. Does that make me a masochist?
Instead of letting the whole experience fade, along with the scar on my tummy, I am constantly reminded, in detail, of what I went through. It’s actually easier as an actor, because technically, the actor dons the role of ?another person’, in this case, a bloke called ’Des’. But every time I am brought back to the fact that ?Des’ is ?me’, by my participation in the post play panel discussion. So, why do I do it?
That answer is simple. I do it because I have been a part of the ?quiet revolution’ in men’s health.
Speaking at one of the first of the Men’s Health Nights, which scarcely existed seven years ago, I became aware that men not only wanted information about their health, especially prostate cancer, but most importantly were wanting permission to talk about it.
So, I wrote the play and I made sure it was a comedy, because laughter enables the audience to focus on otherwise forbidding and confronting subjects, such as impotence. People ask how can I make jokes about my own impotence. When you hear the gales of laughter that greet my stories of ?trial injections’ and then the silence that follows when I say: "You have been able to laugh at something that might otherwise be considered tragic. But in laughing you have removed the tragedy from it," I know the message has got home.
That’s why I continue to do it. And the number of men who feel free to open up afterwards about their own experience is only part of the reward.
But let me say this: sitting on all those panels and listening to a variety of urologists and GP’s answer questions from the hall, I am sometimes saddened, and even angered, because the medical profession seems so split on how to treat prostate cancer and some deliver a most confusing message.
Men have told me:
"The panel recommends a digital rectal examination but my doctor won’t do it."
"My doctor said the PSA is a waste of time." [PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen, usually found in the blood in larger amounts when porstate cancer is present.]
"My doctor said wait till you have symptoms."
That last statement really angers me. I had no symptoms and six of my friends who’ve gone through surgery had no symptoms, yet that statement was made by a doctor holding high office.
So, until the current research is able to finally differentiate between the prostate cancers that will kill and those that will lie dormant, men will continue to suffer the agony of choice.
But together with the Cancer Council, our job is to make that choice an informed one. Then it is up to the individual to make his decision in the light of his life context and, most importantly, his relationship with his partner.
Surviving Prostate Cancer: One Man’s Journey
by Alan Hopgood (Random House) $19.95
For information about the play or the video, contact Bay Street Productions Ph (03) 9596 2064
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