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Sunday, July 6, 2025

All about my prostate examination

by

1749 days ago
20200922

Three years ago I en­tered a phar­ma­cy at Trinci­ty Mall when a ma­ture woman walked up to me and said: “thank you.” This was a time when COVID-19 was nowhere on our radar, so when she stretched out her hand, I gra­cious­ly ac­cept­ed it.

The prob­lem, though, is I had ab­solute­ly no idea what she was thank­ing me for. She prob­a­bly re­alised this from my fa­cial ex­pres­sion and quick­ly apol­o­gised.

She said for years she had been ask­ing her hus­band to get his prostate checked out. He was 59 years old at the time and had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing most of the symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with prostate prob­lems. But like many men, he felt it was not man­ly to get it test­ed. How­ev­er, she was able to fi­nal­ly con­vince him to put all machis­mo aside and sub­mit to the med­ical ex­perts.

So, how did I fac­tor in­to this en­tire equa­tion? Well, weeks ear­li­er I, like many men each year, got my prostate test­ed.

How­ev­er, the on­ly dif­fer­ence is that I wrote about my ex­pe­ri­ence in the T&T Guardian. The woman said her hus­band felt if I was will­ing to tell my sto­ry with­out em­bar­rass­ment, he would be able to at least get his test done since there would be much more pri­va­cy.

The ar­ti­cle about my ex­pe­ri­ence was pub­lished in the Sun­day Guardian on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2017. Face­book re­mind­ed me of this ear­li­er this week.

Sep­tem­ber is cel­e­brat­ed through­out the world as Na­tion­al Prostate Health Month and the news­pa­per planned to ded­i­cate a se­ries to prostate can­cer and help break the un­nec­es­sary taboo as­so­ci­at­ed with it. And so, I vol­un­teered to have my prostate ex­am­ined.

The night be­fore the ex­am­i­na­tion I spent Googling how to pre­pare for it. It was of lit­tle help and ac­tu­al­ly made things worse be­cause I stum­bled up­on a video from the Fam­i­ly Guy car­toon that per­pet­u­at­ed the false nar­ra­tive about the prostate ex­am­i­na­tion.

On the day of the ex­am, I met pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dion Roach at Guardian’s Build­ing in Port-of-Spain where I was sup­posed to be test­ed in­side the T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety’s mo­bile bus.

When Dion and I walked in­to the bus there were four women there. One of them in­tro­duced her­self as Dr As­ante Van­West-Charles-Le Blanc.

As we shook hands, I no­ticed how small hers were. “Thank God,” I thought. I had to fill out a med­ical form stat­ing my age, emer­gency con­tact and whether I had any fam­i­ly who had been di­ag­nosed with can­cer.

It was then that I re­alised that a re­cent health scare in my fam­i­ly had helped me make up my mind to be test­ed.

The first test was the prostate spe­cif­ic anti­gen (PSA) blood test. As a reg­u­lar blood donor, I wasn’t fazed. I then in­ter­viewed Van­West-Charles-Le Blanc as part of the se­ries, who had a very calm­ing pres­ence. Then the mo­ment that most men fear about the prostate ex­am­i­na­tion came. It was time to do the dig­i­tal rec­tal ex­am­i­na­tion (DRE). Off came my jeans; knees to my chest. Then Van­West-Charles-Le Blanc’s calm­ing voice re­peat­ed what would take place. “Re­lax,” she said.

She then placed lu­bri­ca­tion on her gloved hand and in­sert­ed her fin­ger in­to my rec­tum.

In prob­a­bly 20 sec­onds the ex­am­i­na­tion was all over. “That’s it?” I asked her when she said she was fin­ished.

Some fear that get­ting test­ed, be­ing placed in a foetal po­si­tion and hav­ing your prostate test­ed are a sign of weak­ness. In fact, when it was all over, I ac­tu­al­ly felt stronger. Knowl­edge is pow­er and I know now that my prostate health is fine so far.

Prostate can­cer is a bat­tle that can eas­i­ly be won with ear­ly de­tec­tion. Please don’t wait un­til it is too late be­cause of some fool­ish mind­set. Thank­ful­ly that rel­a­tive whose can­cer di­ag­no­sis spurred me on to get my prostate test­ed has been able to beat can­cer be­cause of ear­ly de­tec­tion. And that is the de­fence a prostate ex­am gives you be­cause ear­ly de­tec­tion could be the dif­fer­ence be­tween life and death.

Can­cer does not care who you are.

And so, to all the men who make the wise de­ci­sion to get test­ed, I thank you.


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