The Wrong Side of 40

The phone range just after 5.30 on the Tuesday afternoon. It was my GP and it wasn’t good news.

The results of my PSA had come back to the surgery that afternoon. My score was well over 40. For most people it’s less than four, often much lower.

Looking back, I don’t remember being overly worried about the test. In any case, the nurse had said the results wouldn’t be back for a couple of days so the call that Tuesday afternoon caught me more than a little off guard.

My GP was so concerned he’d decided to ring me right away. He told me that I should book to see a consultant as soon as possible but even with a PSA score this high it didn’t necessarily mean it was cancer. But in reality this was the moment when everything changed because the chances of it being something else were not particularly high.

There’s plenty of information about PSA elsewhere on the web so there’s little point in going into details here. Suffice to say that PSA is a measure of the amount of a chemical produced by the prostate that is known to rise significantly when cancer is present.