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| 10.00.12 | NARRATOR The last decade has witnessed a truly modern phenomenon. Thousands of men and women, faced with potentially fatal illnesses, have turned to the Internet for help with life and death decisions. |
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| 10.00.24 | NARRATOR Here they can a world of knowledge and support, far beyond what they can learn in their limited time with Doctors. |
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| 10.00.31 | NARRATOR The medical establishment is adjusting to their patients increased understanding of a variety of medical conditions. This shared knowledge is changing the course of how illnesses are managed. |
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| 10.00.44 | GEORGE HARDY Let’s say it caught me attention because it had profiles, case histories, life stories of guys from all around the world who’ve been diagnosed. |
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| 10.00.54 | NARRATOR This is the story of three men and their families, who’ve turned to anonymous strangers to discuss life, death, sex and Viagra. |
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| 10.01.03 | MARTIN JONES It's not so much the, the side effect avoidance as mm, staying alive really. If you know what I mean? Is, is a priority. [laughing]. |
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| 10.01.11 | NARRATOR Together they are dealing with the same disease and potentially face the end of their sex lives, a loss of dignity, or even the loss of their lives. |
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| 10.01.21 | HORACE PARRY Jnr What went through my head was, oh my God, I’m going to die. |
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10.02.00 | [Music out] [Music in] NARRATOR It's extraordinary to think that there's one type of cancer that occurs in two thirds of all men by the age of eighty. |
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| 10.02.08 | NARRATOR Diagnoses of this cancer have increased three fold in three decades. It's the most common cancer in UK men. |
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| 10.02.18 | NARRATOR Prostate cancer affects a small part of the male reproductive system. The walnut sized prostate gland which is found just below the bladder. Perhaps it's the glands intimate position inside men’s bodies that make it so hard to talk about and awareness of this cancer, lower than many others. |
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| 10.02.37 | NARRATOR Despite it's prevalence, if caught early, prostate cancer is also increasingly survivable. |
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| 10.02.45 | NARRATOR Martin Jones is fifty six and a Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge University. |
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10.02.54 | MARTIN JONES I’ve been doing archaeology since I was a school kid. I just loved it from the start. I mean I think, I sort of fantasised about the past from about the age of eight or something. There was something kind of er, exciting about it. |
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| 10.03.03 | MARTIN JONES I think what's happened there is you’ve started off with some whole millet seeds, [Music out] and it's been, it's actually been cooked into a sort of porridge. |
| 10.03.10 | WOMAN Okay. Thank you. |
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10.03.45 | (..synch sound..) MARTIN JONES I look at the remains of, er, garbage in various forms, to see, er, what people ate a few hundred years ago or a few thousands of years ago, or even tens of thousands of years ago. I’m also very interested in those two sides of being human. One as a social person, and one as a biological organism and, and, and the mysterious way in which they interconnect. (..synch sound..) I’ve had problems peeing since my forties, I think actually, and so I’ve known that I’ve had symptoms typical of some problem with the prostate. I don’t think I knew much about the prostate at all really, except that it was there and it was getting in the way of my peeing basically. Obviously I, I didn’t know I had cancer at that stage, but I, but I knew it was something to check out. So over the last five years I’ve, I’ve had occasional P.S.A. tests. |
| 10.03.55 | (..synch sound..) NARRATOR P.S.A. tests measure the level of a protein produced by the prostate. Though a high P.S.A. can be caused by a number of different factors, it can also signal the early signs of cancer and warrant further investigation. Tiny biopsy samples collected using an anal probe. |
| 10.04.13 | MARTIN JONES Part of me was kind of half expected that, that there may be a problem, but I was, but I was nevertheless pretty relaxed about it. ….Before, before they stuck, they stuck the probe up my backside, that, that removed the relaxation a bit. |
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| 10.04.28 | NARRATOR Martin has recently received the results of his biopsy, and as he suspected, it wasn’t good news. Martin has the early stages of cancer in his prostate. |
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10.04.46 | MARTIN JONES I think of cancer as a biologist rather than an emotional person, and it seems to be a totally unsurprising thing to happen. [Music out] It did prompt thoughts about what it was to get old and to face immortality, far more than it did about how my body was working. And cycling home, I thought, what am I gonna say to Lucy? |
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| 10.05.00 | MARTIN JONES V/O Hi everyone, I’ve been diagnosed with P.C. a stage one, and I’m feeling okay, if a bit nervous. What's really bugging me …. |
| 10.05.08 | (..synch sound..) GEORGE HARDY Welcome to this excellent, friendly, very helpful site. As has been said that there are many options open to you. |
| 10.05.15 | JULIE I’m sorry to hear that you are struggling, however we all struggle to cope at times, I assure you. I wish I could make my lovely Dad well again. I would give anything to see him walk again, but most of all, I would love to see him pain free. |
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| 10.05.27 | JULIE However, that’s an impossible task. There are a couple of us on this Board who have loved ones with advanced prostate cancer. Please ask us as many questions as you wish. Take care. Julie. |
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| NARRATOR After spending his working life playing keyboards on the North East’s cabaret circuit, George Hardy’s prostate problems only came to light as he made a conscious decision to change his late night life style. |
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10.06.22 | GEORGE HARDY I just decided I was tired of being tired [Music out] after drinking, you know, and I give it all up, and I’ve never had a drink since in er, three year. So I had the healthiest six months of me life, and then I started getting a bit annoyed at the age of er, fifty three, getting up too many times during the night, must to go to the toilet, you know. I went to the Doctors and er, he sent me for a blood test and a week later I had a call from the Doctors saying I had to go down urgently and he showed me, mm, the lab results. It meant nothing to me, but circled was the figure a hundred and eighty two, next to P.S.A. I didn’t even know what P.S.A. was, but apparently it should have been no higher than about four. |
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| NARRATOR Such an extremely high P.S.A. result, signalled a real problem. George was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, and it had already spread outside of the gland. |
| 10.06.58 | GEORGE HARDY I asked outright, you know, what are me chances? [Music out] And he didn’t like to answer but he said, Well, two or three good years, you know and I said, Well what’s gonna happen? And he said, Well you can come and get an injection in your stomach every three month and it’ll shrink the prostate, but it’ll also take away all your testosterone and that, you know, you’ll be er, impotent, you’ll have er, erectile dysfunction. |
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10.07.29 | (..synch sound..) NARRATOR With an advancing cancer and a sobering prognosis, George was offered only one treatment. Hormone therapy to try and slow the cancer, but determined to understand his situation, he turned to the Internet. There he discovered (..synch sound..) a wealth of other men’s experiences, which would lead him and subsequently his Doctors, to reconsider the options. |
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| (..synch sound..) GEORGE HARDY The Internet, in my opinion, saved me life, you know. I, I came home, researched prostate cancer, found out that I had lots of choices, lots of options, and I found some life changing things there. Within days I’d found the YONA site. YONA stands for You Are Not Alone Now, and that site caught me attention because it had profiles, case histories, life stories of guys from all around the world, er, the diagnosis they were given, the prognosis, the P.S.A. levels, treatment they’ve had, the outcomes of the treatment, and er, I was fascinated. I saw a load of people who’d been diagnosed and I found one or two who’d been given the same very bleak diagnosis as I had, and that gives a bit of hope, and I said, ah well, they wrote that three, four year ago, you know, and they're still here. Now it had been suggested that radiotherapy mightn’t help me, but I read up quite a lot and I got back in touch with the Urologist, and said, I want to see an Oncologist immediately and I got to see an Oncologist within a week or two, and from then on everything changed. He more or less said, we might be able to tackle this, and within about six weeks I started radiotherapy treatment. |
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10.09.21 | GEORGE HARDY I think Doctors are amazed now at what patients actually find out for themselves, you know. You say ten years ago this couldn’t have happened. We, I think, would have accepted whatever we’re told by Urologist, Oncologist. I don’t think you would have doubted or questioned their word, you know. You probably accept that they should know best, we’d think, you know, and er, accept treatment. Because of the Internet, you're aware of choices and you can make an informed choice and decision, you know, which can only be a good thing. |
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| 10.09.36 | LUCY WALKER My husband Martin has recently been diagnosed with P.C. P.S.A. rising from 3 point 7 in November 2006 to 6 point 2 in January 2007. Thought likely to be confined to the prostate. He’s fifty six. He has not yet decided which route to take and we’d be interested to hear people’s experience of R.T. |