Civil servant Terry Renouf, who recently stepped down after serving seven years as president of the JCSA Prospect union, enrolled on the ‘well man’ health-check programme when he was 50 and said that if he had not done so, the prostate cancer he recently developed would not have been detected.
The 62-year-old added that the early detection probably prevented the illness from spreading to other parts of his body and gave him more options on which treatment he could receive.
‘My doctor asked if I wanted my prostate checked as part of the well man checks,’ said Mr Renouf. Following further tests it was established that Mr Renouf had cancerous cells in his prostate.
This year he proceeded with a brachytherapy course, which is a relatively unintrusive form of treatment involving radioactive material being placed inside the body to combat the cancer, at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge.
‘The thing is getting diagnosed early. I had no symptoms or inkling that anything was wrong prior to this, so there was
nothing else to let me know that I had it,’ he said.
‘They caught my cancer early, so it was contained within the prostate and hadn’t hit one of the lymph glands, which could have caused it to spread.
‘Also the earlier they catch it the more treatment options you have. If I had discovered mine later I may have had to have much more difficult treatment and less chance of success, so it could have saved my life.’
Mr Renouf, who describes himself as a ‘Jersey boy through and through’ having shown massive devotion to his home parish of St Mary throughout his life, added that Islanders, and in particular men, needed to make more effort to get regular health checks.
He added that while at Addenbrooke’s he had come across men in their 30s receiving treatment.
‘Men are notorious for not getting things checked – we take our health for granted. You have screening programmes for breast, bowel and cervical cancer but not for prostate,’ he said.
‘It is estimated that every 45 minutes a man dies in the UK due to prostate cancer and that’s absolutely shocking.’
Ben Hughes, the consultant urologist at Jersey Hospital, backed Mr Renouf’’s decision to use his public profile to raise awareness of prostate cancer screening.
‘Every time someone in the public spotlights comes forward about having prostate cancer it increases the number of screenings, which is a good thing. The number of diagnoses are increasing because awareness is increasing,’ he said.
‘There is no mass screening programme for prostate cancer but men are within their rights to go to their GP to ask for PSA test.
‘If men have one first degree relative who developed prostate cancer under the age of 65 then they have double the chance of getting it themselves. And if they have more then one relative who did their chances are even higher.
‘We advise they should be tested from age 45.
‘Black men have a one in four chance of developing prostate cancer during their life, so they should also get checked from age 45. It’s about targeting the most at risk groups.
‘Most men will get checked from age 50 in Jersey under the Well Man programme.’
