Strabane man issues warning over prostate cancer

A STRABANE man, currently in a battle with prostate cancer, has pleaded with men of all ages to go and get themselves checked if they feel something is wrong.

Tony Diver of Landsdowne Park was diagnosed with the disease last year after he began feeling unwell and recently undertook a sponsored walk with his family, raising £1600 for Macmillan and Prostate Cancer UK.

Speaking of his ordeal, Tony remarked this week, “Cancer doesn’t discriminate because of age.”

“Around May of last year, I began to feel very unwell, always running to the toilet in the middle of the night and had a sore pain in my gut,” Tony recalled. “I knew that something wasn’t right so went to see my doctor. At my first visit the doctor did what’s called a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test and my level was six. I was told that number wasn’t particularly high but it wasn’t low either. I kept on at the doctor and, after more PSA’s, eventually he agreed that something wasn’t right.”

Tony then endured a battery of tests, including scans, MRI’s and numerous biopsies, often two of each, before he received the terrible news. He remembers the time vividly as it coincided with a gut-wrenching family tragedy.

“I’ll never forget the phone call,” he said, “I took the call and the nurse said to me, ‘Tony, do you want to come down to the hospital, we have the results of your tests, or I can just tell you now’. I said ‘Sure just tell me now on the phone, the results will be the same whether I’m in front of you or not.’ And she told me it was confirmed I had prostate cancer. I knew that something hadn’t been right but it still came as a huge shock.

“I told my wife, who actually took it worse than I did, but we kept it from the rest of the family for a bit as my wee grandson had tragically passed away around the same time. I couldn’t have put that extra burden on the family with our wee boy lying in the corner. So I toughed it out through the funeral and eventually I told everyone else about the cancer and we all rallied around together as a family.”

As soon as he was diagnosed, Tony underwent a course of treatment where he was forced to endure 39 bouts of radiotherapy, every day, excluding weekends which he admits ‘took a lot out of me’, on top of which, Tony spent eleven days last summer struck down by Covid-19.

“Having to go through that level of treatment every day, feeling sick and tired a lot of the time, was very challenging and something which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve; it didn’t matter, I needed the treatment no matter what.”

“I’m on hormone treatment now with two more courses to go although it’ll take around 18 months before everything is settled down if the cancer is gone. My PSA count is around 0.02 and the doctor says it could go even lower, the lower it goes, the better.”

Having gone through this nightmare, Tony says that getting checked out is the best thing to do.

“Men have a reluctance to get things checked by a doctor if they’re unwell but my advice is; do it. If you think something is wrong, get yourself looked at for God’s sake. When I was in the waiting room to get treated, men of all ages were there for the same reason. Cancer doesn’t discriminate because of age.

“I’m active still; I even went and built a shed after being diagnosed and told to take it easy, which my wife wasn’t pleased about I can tell you. I have no intentions of letting it beat me. I’m 73 years old and I’ll fight as long as I’m alive.”