I must admit when I read the results from the Internet, cryotherapy struck me as being useful rather like Brachytherapy but they’re using a very, very cold Argon gas that freezes the prostate to death.

I spoke about all the various possibilities with the consultant, and he said cryotherapy is not available in England. So I said ‘In that case let’s go for Brachytherapy,’ which I understood then was available in Leeds and in London. And he went off to refer me for Brachytherapy. Literally the next day I saw in the Telegraph that Mr X down in X Town was in fact going to start up with Cryotherapy and I went back to see the consultant, and said ‘Oi what about this?’ and he read the article, took a photocopy of it and promptly referred me.

And I put this to my GP and he said ‘Yes you’re absolutely right but at the present time we have to put certain treatments out to tender and cancers are covered for our particular practice by [Hospital] so if you like your treatment has already been paid for in advance and that’s somewhat different to having to come up with the cash to pay for your treatment now. But he said ‘Leave it with me,’ and a month later he came back and said ‘It’s fixed. So I was very lucky and I was treated under the National Health.

I went down to the operating theatre somewhere about 10, 11 in the morning I was given a general anaesthetic and the next thing that I remember I was in bed and it was 4 o clock in the afternoon and everything had gone well.

After the cryosurgery I was a bit battered and bruised down below. One of the things Mr X had to guard against is that whilst he was happy, willing and raring to freeze my prostate to death, once that had happened it would be absorbed into the body, there were certain parts that he didn’t want to freeze and so warm saline solution was pumped in and out of those parts to keep them warmed up. But I was pretty badly bruised and swelling and all the rest of it and he decided that he should give those working parts a bit of a rest and I had a secondary plumbing system inserted just about the navel, and I wore a bag for about a month. That was inconvenient.

This is for urine?

That’s for urine yes, that was for urine. It was inconvenient but certainly the month I had the bag all the bruising went and the stitches were removed and the bag was eventually removed and I’ve had no urinary problems since.

And what about sexually because that’s another thing a lot of men worry about, particularly with the other forms of treatment where you can have problems with erections and things like that?

Well yeah I have had a problem there but I was warned that that might be the case and might last for a year or so and yeah I still have a problem there. If I was 30 it might be a greater problem but I’m not.

I would say that at no time prior to or after my treatment have I ever had any pain or any reactions to the treatment whatsoever.

Radiotherapy I didn’t want, I wasn’t interested in that, I thought it was far more destructive than healing in my opinion. I was offered prostatectomy, no I wasn’t offered prostatectomy sorry, I was too old for prostatectomy, I was told they only did it if you were below 70 and I was 71. That would’ve been my choice if I, if I had a choice but I went onto these Depo injections and I think I would’ve stayed in the Depo injections unless, well until I saw one article in the Telegraph. There was a consultant at X Town who was doing, who was going to set up a surgery doing cryogenic surgery on the prostate.

Cryosurgery is freezing of any part of the body down below 155 degrees Fahrenheit, it freezes whatever the probes are put into and it disintegrates that part of the body which falls away. Probes are placed into the prostate, around the cancer and then it is frozen and that falls away inside your body and the body disposes of it. There are heaters placed to protect certain vital parts of your body, say your anus and your urinal tract and these are carefully monitored. It’s a 6 hour operation but it is very painless, theres no after effects. And 3 days after the operation I was able to walk out the hospital and come home although I did have…

A catheter?

A catheter in my, which I used to carry around for 3 weeks. And I had to drink 8 pints of water a day which was no problem plus coffee and tea and I found the catheter very convenient really because I didn’t have to look for a toilet when I was out, or in the garden even. And sleeping was no problem, what else?.

So when you went into hospital to have the cryosurgery did you go in the night before?

No I went in at 8 oclock, no breakfast, and had the operation that started 2 oclock and it finished at 8 oclock in the evening, when I came round. I was covered with a heating blanket and a foil blanket, very, very cold, which only lasted about half an hour I suppose and I had a supra-pubic drain placed in my stomach which I passed my urine through and I had a flushing catheter put into my penis which flushed the, my urine out and my bladder and I had 6 spots just behind the testicles where these probes went in and apart from that I didn’t feel anything really. They stripped it all out after about 2 days and left the super-pubic drain in and I was, well ready to go home really.

The catheter in my penis came out after about 2 days and I was left with, with just the supra-pubic drain into my stomach which I passed urine through.

So the drain that you came, the catheter that you came home with for passing, that came out of your stomach did it?

It did yes yeah, yeah.

Right.

And yeah as I say it was quite convenient. All I had to do was just connect up a new bag every day and at night I put on a, connected up to a much larger bag because I was drinking so much liquid and I found it very convenient, I didn’t have to get up during the night to go to the toilet [laughs] so I was able to get a good night’s sleep you know. And when I came home, I went in on the Tuesday, I came home on the Friday and I was fully mobile and I could do most things. And they, the consultant said ‘Do what you can, if you feel like you can do it do it you know. I was unable to drive the car for 3 weeks but apart from that I could do most things. I did gardening, digging and the operation itself was absolutely painless and no discomfort at all.

So having that cryosurgery I am back to what I was when I was a scho