WORDS BY INDIANA ROBERTS, IMAGE BY ANNIE STUDHOLME
At 54 years old, Ruralco On-Farm Sales Manager, Lester Chambers is pretty open about his experience with prostate cancer.
Lester could have easily fallen within the margin of men who would rather not talk at all than talk about the issues they’re having “down there”. But instead, Lester understands the importance of openly sharing his experience with a disease that kills roughly two Kiwi men every day.
When Lester was in his late 30’s, he received a call. His father, Ron, had been in a car crash and was being airlifted to hospital. It was there that doctors disclosed Ron was in renal failure as a result of progressive prostate cancer. Lester’s father knew about the cancer, but he had been silently suffering with it for years. By the time his family found out it was already too late. A month later, at 65 years old, he was gone.
After his father’s death, Lester took it upon himself to educate himself about the disease. He realised that, with his father’s history, the chances of him also getting prostate cancer increased significantly and he needed to do something to mitigate the risk.
“Because I knew my father had died of it, probably every year or every two years I was getting tested,” says Lester. “Even though I had a family history of it, there was no system in place to remind me to get tested, other than my own volition. And there should be.”
The initial test for prostate cancer is a simple blood draw that checks PSA (prostate-specific-antigen) levels. “There’s no fingers, it’s not invasive,” Lester says.
In August 2021, the blood test that had become routine for Lester came back showing elevated levels of PSA, a common indicator that something is abnormal. Doctors monitored the levels through a further blood test in October, but they didn’t decrease. “They decided it would be best to get a biopsy done,” Lester recalls.
He booked in for a physical exam, and in February 2022 was referred to a urologist where the biopsy was completed, and 12 samples were collected from his prostate gland. Around the end of February 2022, Lester heard back about the biopsy results. “They phoned me and said that one of the samples had come back with cancer…malignant cancer.”
“I had not had any issues. If you were to take me physically at the time, other than the PSA test and the biopsy, I had no symptoms. Nothing. Zip. I would not have known that there was anything wrong. I had no idea I was living with something that could potentially kill me.”
Lester was confronted with the reality that, without treatment, this disease he wasn’t even aware he had could progress to be fatal. He was not going to go out like his father had – it was time to make a plan.
“When you have a life-threatening disease you do a lot of research,” Lester says. “It was a pretty tough time mentally; it does knock you around when someone says, “you’ve got cancer”.”
The two treatments that he had access to were surgery or radiation therapy, but at the time radiation therapy felt like the best option for him. “Something to note is that if you get prostate cancer and get treatment for it, you will not be able to father children anymore. But at my age that wasn’t a concern.”
Lester has three adult children and five grandchildren. He lives in Ashburton with his wife, Lisa, and loves getting away in the caravan and visiting family.
In May 2022 Lester underwent a month of radiation treatment and further blood tests to monitor the PSA levels once more. In December 2022 doctor’s officially informed Lester he was in remission.
“A lot of men don’t talk about it,” Lester says. “But for me, with my experience, I sit here and wonder why would you not? If you know it’s an issue or there’s potential for an issue, why would you not just get a blood test?
“I’m back to normal, back to 100%. You wouldn’t even know that I’ve had treatment. But if the doctors hadn’t caught it as early as they had, I might not be sitting here today. Prostate cancer doesn’t always present with symptoms, so get it added to a blood test when you next go to the GP.”
FROM PROSTATE.ORG.NZ:
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in New Zealand with around 4,000 diagnosed every year [exceeding breast cancer levels], that’s an average of 10 every day.
• Prostate cancer is the second highest cause of cancer death in men after lung cancer, and the third highest for all sexes (behind lung and bowel cancers).
• 1 in 8 men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime.
• Around 700 Kiwi men die from prostate cancer each year, that’s almost 2 men every day.
• An estimated 42,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer are living in New Zealand.
• Māori men are 72 per cent more likely to die of prostate cancer once they are diagnosed than non-Māori men.
• 61% of prostate cancer survivors say they had no symptoms when diagnosed.
• Prostate cancer is a family issue—if a man has two or more first-degree relatives who were diagnosed with prostate cancer under the age of 65 years, then his risk increases by 5–11 times.
Contact the Prostate Cancer Foundation Information Service. Dial 0800 66 0800 toll free from anywhere in New Zealand, Monday to Friday (10:00am to 6:00pm)
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