On the Road Again!

January 13th came along all too quickly. The day of the biopsy. I read the paperwork again. Needed to have a urine sample and of course I had no specimen bottle.  In the morning we had to go into Hythe and so I got a couple of bottles there. Should have asked when we were in the surgery a few days earlier! So was it as bad as the paperwork said? No in short. The consultant, Raj, explained that the MRI had been inconclusive. On a scale of  one to five where one and two were clear, four and five were cancerous. I was a three.  The description is for a needle between scrotum and anus. This is actually the local anaesthetic injections. Two external and once the probe is inserted, two more inside. From there it's pretty much a lot of pushing and probing. The probe is about the thickness of my thumb. To get to all parts of the prostate it's moved about. Then the "click" of the cutter that takes a chunk out of the prostate. They took twelve bits for analysis. The pain lasted...

The whole journey started on November 2nd 2023 when I went to the surgery for a blood test.  This one was for my diabetes type 2 test. I had booked it online and someone who booked it at their end hadn't said what tests to do. The phlebotomist took blood and then ticked all the boxes on the computer.  Luckily they did. A few days later I had a call from the surgery with news that my PSA (prostate specific antigen) was on the high side. As a result they were referring me to the Urology department at the local hospital. So far the NHS was working well.  The referral was to the Urology department at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Folkestone for November 17th. Here we almost entered the world of farce theatre. The doctor was very good and explained about PSA and possible outcomes. He only mentioned the Big-C once. "Go behind the curtain and drop your trousers and pants, lie on your side facing the curtain." I did. WTF! The window was fitted with vertical blinds. E...