Olympic legend Sir Chris Hoy launched his crusade to fight prostate cancer after his own terminal diagnosis, with astonishing results
Sir Chris Hoy’s crusade to fight prostate cancer has already helped to save 1,000 lives. The Olympic legend revealed his own terminal diagnosis with the disease last October.
He also told how wife, Sarra, 45, had just discovered that she had multiple sclerosis, a condition where the body attacks its own immune system. Hoy, 49, then partnered with the charity Prostate Cancer UK to provide an online 30-second questionnaire. An impressive 180,000 men have used the ‘risk checker’; as a result, more than 1,000 had a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test which revealed they had prostate cancer.
“So that campaign has saved lives,” said Sir Chris. “In all the chaos and all the fear and all the horror of first being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, you can never imagine any positive outcome coming from that situation. So to know that there is one has given me a purpose. In difficult moments, you remind yourself, actually there is a net positive from this whole situation. And I’m lucky because I have a platform.”
His determination to remain positive and spread the message about men getting checked has helped to raise his spirits. “My Instagram message feed is stacked with people who had no symptoms,” he told the Sunday Times. “They had no reason to get a other than they’d seen my news. And they did it off the back of that, and found out they do have prostate cancer. They’ve caught it early. They’re going to get treatment, and it’s hopefully going to be OK. That gives me a huge lift.” His terminal diagnosis has given him “a different level of appreciation of life.”
Some experts believe that PSA tests provide too many false positives and negatives. Hoy, a six-times Olympic champion, admitted: “It isn’t 100 percent accurate.
“But it’s the best we’ve got, and prostate is the most common cancer in England in men. So I believe we need to be more proactive in how we screen. Look at my situation.”
The Scot had a family history of the illness but he had “no symptoms, no warnings, so I would not have got a PSA test if I’d just gone to a regular GP. They’d have said, ‘Come back when you’re 50’.
“But by that point it would have been far too late.” He has two children with Sarra, Callum, nine, and Chloe, seven. When people ask him for a selfie, his children ask: “Is it because of cancer?”.
He says: “It’s not something that really scares them, they don’t talk about it much, it’s just there.” Sarra is ‘stoic and strong’. The children are still unaware of her diagnosis.
Advanced prostate cancer is when the cancer cells have spread from the prostate, a gland which is the size of a walnut and sits just beneath the bladder, to other parts of the body.
It is not possible to cure at the advanced stage, but there are treatments to help control it. If cancer has spread to the bone, the most common symptom is bone pain. It can be a dull ache or stabbing pain, and can wake you up at night.
With Sir Chris, the first symptom was pain in his shoulder. His chemo was painful because he chose to wear a cap to avoid hair loss for the sake of his young children.
Early prostate cancer often has no symptoms. But early signs include a need to urinate more often, especially at night. Most prostate cancers are found early through screening.
Men at average risk are likely to have their first screening test at 55 in the UK. Many men searched ‘Sir Chris Hoy’ after he went public with his diagnosis, and charities and fellow athletes praised the courage of that decision. Those at high risk may take the test at 45 or even younger.
Hoy’s ‘Tour de 4’ takes place on Sept 7, a charity bike ride for 5,000 cyclists, many living with stage 4 cancer. It aims to raise £1m, and starts and finishes at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow. To sign up go to https://www.tourde4.com.