• Plantar fasciitis. Painful Inflamation of the ligament on the sole of your foot. Mine has taken over 2 years to reduce to a tolerable level. Mainly through use of customised insoles.
• Hernias. Don’t lift tons of rubble! Left & Right inguinal hernias corrected by surgery
• Eyes: Central Serous Retinopathy. Degeneration and blistering of the central macula, brought on by stress.
• Procesing speed dyslexia. Not diagnoed until in my 50’s. Like having a small computer of limited memory capacity in your brain, so that you can only process a small amount of information at once.
• Excercise: 20 minutes stretching exercises each morning; two hour walk with dogs, then 4k run with 100m ascent/descent. Running once a week with Hash House Harriers.

• Prostate Cancer

I have been given a second chance at life.

Second chances come with conditions, and these are mine. They touch the most tender and intimate moments of love and trust.

Catching my cancer early was serendipity. We moved house and I changed GP. He spotted that my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) had risen from 4.6 to 5.9 over a few months. Also I had a raised enzyme test (Alkaline Phosphatase, normally a sign of changes in the bone (where prostate tumours metastasize to), but in my case is probably hereditary. My wife Carolyn, who had worked in a ward for the terminally ill, said I smelt of cancer. Anyway, I was sent for a biopsy, which showed I had a cancer.

This was in 2008 and came after many years of prodding up my rear passage with rubber gloves and lots of PSA tests, all of which came back raised, but only at low counts (3.9 – 5.2 over 2001-2006). For the technically minded, the histology report on my prostate, showed that I had a bilateral Gleason score of 3+3 = 6, indicating an adenocarcinoma of the prostate. So the message is, don’t put too much faith in PSA results; get a biopsy.

My prostate had grown from the size of a walnut, to that of a small orange. I elected to have it surgically removed, (a radical prostatectomy). I wanted to live whatever the cost. I am now paying that cost.

Surgically removing a prostate can dramatically affect your sex life. So beware of this if you are in this position!

It is one thing when you are in a loving and sympathetic relationship, it is another when you have to start building your life again with another person.

Surgery often causes loss of the two nerves which control erectile function, so Sergeant Pepper no longer stands to attention. Well he will if you inject him with a drug that constricts blood supply (a vaso-constrictor), but this does dampen moments of passion totally! Also, the piece of the urethra that passes through the prostate is also removed, which effectively reduces the length of Sergeant Pepper. These things are not always explained, or the long term implications considered. Viagra does not work, as you need an intact nerve supply.

But I am still here 10 years later. My choice then, but not that of my wife’s.