Introduction
by Ros Ayres, Digital Content Editor at Macmillan
Listen to the article:This is Jon’s story, so you might be wondering why I am up first.
The answer is simple: he is my brother, and prostate cancer has shaped our family’s life.
I work for Macmillan, an organisation many people recognise by its green logo. But behind that logo are people like you, me, and Jon.
In the UK, someone is diagnosed with cancer around every 75 seconds.
My mum died of cancer. So did several of my aunts and uncles. Now Jon is living with advanced prostate cancer.
Each experience has been different, because cancer is never just one story.Before working at Macmillan, I didn’t realise how much support was available. If you’re reading this after a diagnosis, or supporting someone else, hearing other people’s experiences and knowing what help exists can make a real difference, even if you don’t need it right now.
Jon is still working. Still seeing family and friends. Still walking his dog. He challenges assumptions about what advanced cancer looks like.
I’ll hand over now. This is Jon’s story, in his own words.
Jon's story
Before diagnosis: life as normal
It started early in 2025.
I was away for work and thought I had a urinary infection. I took some tablets and got on with it. I’m not good at going to the doctor anyway. I had three similar episodes over three months. Nothing dramatic, nothing that made me think “this is cancer”, but enough that I eventually thought, this is a bit weird.I finally went to my GP at the end of May and the first thing she said was, “I think you might have a sexually transmitted infection” I was like, thanks very much, I don’t think so.
She referred me for tests, and that started the process. I’d had a PSA test (a type of blood test) through my work health insurance nine months earlier, and it had been clear. So, I thought, even if this is something, it can’t be that bad.
In June, I had another PSA test. The normal score for men is around 4. Mine was 62. When they told me it was “very high”, they didn’t tell me what the normal range was. I had no context. No way of understanding what that meant.
Diagnosis: the moment everything changed
By the end of June, I’d had an ultrasound, an MRI and a bone scan.
In July, the urologist in Stamford told me it was prostate cancer and that it had spread beyond the prostate into the lymph nodes.
It was a strange experience, sitting there while someone tells you news like that. I had to ask directly: what does that mean? How serious is it?
After that, you are then passed to oncology (the cancer specialist team) which can take weeks.
"I realised I had to stop pushing through and start focusing on recovery."
Treatment: throwing everything at it
Starting chemotherapy in August was very quick. To be fair to the NHS, that speed was impressive.
The oncologist said: here are all the things we can do together - different types of hormone therapy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy - or we can do them one by one.
She asked what I wanted to do. I said, honestly, how would I know? She said she would do everything at once, because I was relatively young for prostate cancer. So that’s what we did.
I had six rounds of chemotherapy, three weeks apart, finishing at the end of November.
Alongside that, hormone therapy, injections every few months and daily tablets. The hormone therapy is essentially anti-testosterone to inhibit cancer growth.
That brings its own effects: your head doesn’t quite work properly, you feel very tired, body hair falls out, muscle wastage, weight gain.
It’s very primitive, but that’s how it works.
I was lucky with the chemotherapy. I didn’t have the severe side effects some people experience. A few rough days after the treatment, then back to something like normal.
Because I responded well, they were able to isolate the cancer in the prostate and move on to six weekly sessions of radiotherapy over Christmas.
