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| Me, Dwight, Byron, Lloyd |
I was motivated to take part in Prostate Cancer UK MarchForMen 2024 by the memeory James, the husband of my niece Eve-Marie, who died from cancer last year.
I had very memorable day, meet some great people and heard some very moving stories.
I arrived at the site at 10:30 for a 12:00 pm start, which was far too early. The Elizabeth line was closed I gave myself good time as Southeastern cannot be relied on as an alternative especially on Sundays. That gave me the opportunity time to watch the crowd grow and it did and quickly all kinds of folk ages, colours, genders, ethnicities, many pushing prams, others with their dogs, a real family-fun-day out for such an important cause and many like me walking for a named loved or relative.
At the start of the walk the CEO of Prostate Cancer UK explained why we were all there:
· Prostate Cancer effects 1 in 8 man and specifically 1 in 4 Black man
· Prostate Cancer UK wants screening for all just as there is for breast cancer.
· Men need to talk about Prostrate Cancer and its symptoms (more of that later)
· MarchForMen 2024 will raise £3,000,000
While waiting, I sat down and started chatting to three guys: Lloyd and Byron who were old friends and Dwight who they'd just met. We got on well, so well indeed the four of us spent the walk to together, starting and finishing together. Dwight went on to do a third lap, we three did just 5K, two laps of Battersea Park so Dwight doesn’t appear in final picture of us with our MarchForMen medals.
Byron had had surgery for prostrate cancer and shared his journey with us. He had made a full recovery nevertheless there were still things he needs still to be alert to. This was made real by him taking some incontinence pads from a table of various forms of male incontinence pads by the toilet block.
This was a really revelatory part of the day for me as first Byron, then we all shared issues with peeing and leaks. In the past we as men, full of machismo would never talked about such things, that was for women. Times have changed thanks to Prostate Cancer UK and others particularly our other halves who have urged that peeing issues should be discussed and acted on, not neglected as the consequences could be literally deadly.
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| Lloyd, Me, Byron |
It was brilliant day for such a brilliant cause with seamless delivery of MarchForMen 2024 by Prostrate Cancer UK. I was surprised how much my hips hurt as I limped home at the end of the day. Despite that the aches and pains it was wonderful day, made some new friends and raised, as I write this £245 – 245% of my original £100 target - so a huge thanks to all those who supported me and you can still contribute, the page is still open….just sayin’ ! And BTW I've signed up for
...and for you men if you haven't done the 30s prostrate test you can do it right now...
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