Newcastle grandfather diagnosed with prostate cancer after taking test 'just in case' he had disease; Newcastle veteran Russell Stewart decided to get tested after presenter Bill Turnbull shared the news of his prostate cancer diagnosis -a decision which could have saved his life.
Byline: By, Hannah Graham
Russell Stewart had no reason to think anything was wrong.
But the 69-year-old, from Newcastle, might owe his life to a cancer test he took just to be on the safe side.
In 2017, the news that former BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnbull had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread through much of his body prompted many men to get their own health checked -and Russell was among them.
The retired sergeant in the Royal Engineers Bomb Disposal Unit and ex-police sergeant had minor bladder issues in his late forties, but check ups from doctors and long-term medication appeared to have resolved them.
At the time, a doctor had checked his prostate and identified no problems -but as he got older, Russell realised it might be worth checking if that was still the case.
He said: "It was a couple of years ago, about the time I was reading about Bill Turnbull and I just thought, you know, it's been about 10 or 15 years since I had a test so I will just go, just in case."
Russell's GP was happy to administer a PSA prostate specific antigen test, which showed slightly raised levels of a protein normally produced by the prostate, high levels of which can indicate cancer.
The grandfather-of-one was booked in for three-monthly repeats of the test -which meant that when his levels spike, in June 2018, medics were able to act at once.
A biopsy at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead revealed a small cancerous lesion contained within the prostate. But thanks to the test, it had been caught early.
Russell said: "It was still all contained within the prostate. When the consultant told us, my wife Kath, who is a very strong person and who has had a brain tumour herself, burst into tears.
"But the consultant said we had to know something, and I'll always remember what he said 'because it has been caught early, it was treatable and curable'.
"That was always in the back of my mind, 'treatable and curable'."
There were a number of options for treatment, and because the...
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