Just another little prick!

It is blood test time again! 😳

It is that time again that I sit here waiting to head off to my local surgery for my three monthly PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) blood test. Can’t fucking wait!

I may have mentioned in some previous posts that I bloody hate needles! The nurses that extract my blood I am sure are recruited straight from the Romanian Alps region…

Nurse Recruiter: “Hi there, possible future blood nurse. First question for this interview is…“What’s your address?””

Possible future blood nurse: “Brans Castle, Transylvania”

Nurse Recruiter: “Yep, you’re hired!”

Newly recruited blood nurse: “Ah Ah Ah” (go on, do it out loud with a deep east European accent)

I jest off course (only slightly), they are all lovely, supportive and caring professionals that are just overly eager to jab me with a piece of sharp metal every time that I see them.

Let me go back a step on why I am having three monthly bloods. After I had my radical prostatectomy, the Doc needed to keep an eye on my PSA levels. They do this to see if there is a chance of the prostate cancer finding itself somewhere else to live in my body now that we have towed its former home (the prostate) and incinerated it. I have been informed that a PSA test result following a radical prostatectomy should come back with a negligible reading…something less than 0.1 ng/ml.

So shortly after my surgery, the little fucker of a PSA results started to creep upwards. Thats when they decided to zap my penis area with a massive James Bond style laser and inject hormones into my tummy so that I could grow boobs and have hot flushes…the things that us men have to put up with is quite victorian in nature🙄.

With that, the following conversation pursued with Katie (the Oncology doctor)…

Katie: “Hey Mark, hows things?”

My Brain: “Yeah just fine and dandy thanks Katie, being on your Christmas card list was something that I forgot to put on my things to do in 2022!”

Me: “Yeah, all good” (men lie so good when it comes to that question being asked!)

Katie: “I would like to keep an eye on your PSA levels please Mark, so let’s get your bloods done every three months and we will have a catch up to see where they are at. Is that OK?”

My Brain: “Like hell that is OK! Me and needles do not have a good relationship and you are asking for me to get jabbed every three months…that is just fucking lovely. Thanks Doc”

Me: “Sure thing, speak in three months”

So the extraction of my blood happens every three months and I go through that same drama every three months with the following:

1) Booking an appointment at the local surgery with Dracula’s assistant, sorry, I meant to say ‘blood nurse’, and the receptionist (with that questioning tone) asking “Has a doctor asked for this?”. With me responding “Yes, oncology have asked for it”…we speak every bloody quarter.

2) Me getting stressed on the day of the blood test as, as I have mentioned a few times, I HATE FUCKING NEEDLES, especially when they are heading in my direction!

3) Then it is the waiting game for the results and the catch up with Katie.

The waiting is the worst. Waiting for that message on my NHS app telling me what my results are and if they have ‘gone up again’.

I literally have to sit myself away in our bedroom at home and look at the results by myself. It is like playing Russian roulette and waiting to see if this cancer bullet is going to strike you again with the opening of a results from a blood test. For anyone that goes through this, or something similar, you have my complete sympathy. It is shit! There are times when I actually think about just getting on with life and not checking every three months just to reduce the level of stress. But this is not fair on my loved ones, I know this.

So as I sit here with 1 hour and 52 minutes to go until my bloods are taken, I reflect that here we go again on the merry-go-round of the prostate cancer experience (don’t think that DisneyWorld will steal that one anytime soon for their next ride at the Magic Kingdom Park!). On the other side of the coin…I am extremely lucky that I live in a country with a health system set up to support me through this and keep an eye on me..thank you NHS💙.

Wish me well, hope to see you next week.

Also, if anyone is actually interested in what the results have been previously, just so that we can play ‘PSA trumps’, go ahead and ask in the comments below. I won’t be shy, and to be fair, I have had a complete stranger stick their fingers up my arse, a nurse pull a tube from my penis and a whole medical team see my legs up in stirrups with no boxers on…no room for shy here!

If you need more support then there are some great charities ready to help:

United Kingdom: https://prostatecanceruk.org

United States: https://www.pcf.org