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IT WAS two days before Christmas when Darren Abramson was diagnosed with advanced and incurable prostate cancer.
The dad-of-two, then aged 42, hadn’t been able to pee after coming home from a night out.
Worried, he got tested privately which led to a shocking prognosis.
He was given three to five years to live.
“My wife and I prepared the Christmas meal with a smile, while inside we were numb and crumbling,” Darren, now 45, tells Sun Health.
“I have eight and nine-year-old boys who still think daddy’s invincible. We didn’t tell the boys that day.”
Read more on prostate cancer
Since Darren’s diagnosis, in December 2023, experts have been debating about whether there should be a national prostate cancer screening programme – like there is for breast, bowel and lung cancer.
But today, doctors made the landmark decision that the majority of men should not be routinely tested.
The UK National Screening Committee has decided against routine testing of more than one million Black men and those with a family history of the disease, whose risks of the disease are twice as high.
Instead, the committee is expected to call for screening for a small proportion of men – around 30,000 – with high-risk BRCA gene mutations.
Charities reacted to the news with anger and “deep disappointment”.
Darren, whose father died of prostate cancer, said: “The consequences of not doing it [having a prostate cancer screening programme] are so desperate and drastic.”
Darren first started getting trouble peeing seven months before his diagnosis.
A physiotherapist and former Royal Marine, his young age and physical fitness were used as reason not to test him for cancer when he visited his GP.
The dad-of-two’s symptoms were attributed to an enlarged prostate.
His mum had breast cancer and his father prostate cancer, from which he passed away aged 71.
Then in December, Darren came home from a Christmas night out and “could not pee at all”.
“That was the point when I thought ‘there’s something serious going on here’,” he recalls.
Darren went private and was fast-tracked through investigations, given a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, MRI and biopsy.
My kids will probably always remember their dad as having cancer, but always being really fit – until I’m not.
Darren Abramson
“I had a PSA of 31, which at that level means you’ve got prostate cancer, there’s no way around it,” he says.
Darren was told the cancer had spread outside his prostate to surrounding bones and was aggressive and incurable.
“My first reaction was ‘well, let’s have surgery, let’s chop it out’,” he recalls.
“[The urologist] said ‘we can’t do that, it’s inoperable’ and that took a while to process.”
Darren and his wife, Ruth, 45, still chose to host Christmas Day celebrations, battling numbness and shock, but didn’t tell their eight and nine-year-old sons until he’d started treatment.
He has responded well to treatment – hormone therapy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy – and has continued working, as well as running, weight-lifting, playing tennis and play-wrestling with his sons.
“My kids will probably always remember their dad as having cancer, but always being really fit – until I’m not,” the dad says.
After the Marines – and a stint in professional football – Darren worked as a close protection officer in Iraq for three years, which he says has given him a “template for dealing with extreme situations”.
“I don’t really think about mortality,” Darren muses.
“I’ve learned very early on that I can’t think about my wife and kids and what will happen to them because if you do that it just reduces you to tears instantly, because there’s nothing that you can do about that.”
THE NOISE DISAPPEARS
Darren also watched his own dad pass away from prostate cancer at the age of 71.
“Watching him go through the palliative process, in his bed in my family home, probably has helped me in some way know what might happen to me in the end.
“I don’t plan to die any time soon but I don’t fear it.”
There’s the big argument for ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good’.
Darren Abramson
Darren says his diagnosis has made the “noise in life disappear”.
“You realise what is truly important and what isn’t.”
For the time being, he’s spending time with his family, going on holidays and trying to have “meaningful conversations with people”.
In October, Darren spoke at a parliamentary reception held by Prostate Cancer Research (PCR) in favour of a national prostate cancer screening programme, also attended by Rishi Sunak and David Lammy.
The charity campaigned for a targeted screening programme that would assess Black men and those with a family history of prostate cancer between the ages of 45 and 69.
In this case, Darren would not have qualified for screening anyway, because he was 42 when he started showing symptoms.
But had he been older, he would have been detected by a screening programme, due to his family history.
He says: “On a personal level, yes of course, I want early prostate cancer screening because mine might have been picked up earlier – but in reality, if it was I’d still have been advanced at that point.
“But there’s the big argument for ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good’.”
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in the UK, with 55,000 new cases and 12,000 deaths each year.
Oliver Kemp, CEO of Prostate Cancer Research says: “Today’s decision to recommend screening to BRCA variant carriers does not go far enough.
“It is a missed opportunity for other high-risk groups, including Black men and men with family history.
“Black men and men with a family history of prostate cancer face at least twice the risk of developing the disease.
“We are failing these groups and entrenching inequalities further by not providing them with the best chance of having their disease caught early – when they are more likely to survive.”
Laura Kerby, CEO of Prostate Cancer UK, adds: “The committee’s decision will come as a blow to the tens of thousands of men, loved ones and families who’ve fought for a screening programme.”
It seems straightforward – test more men, save more lives.
However, the debate around whether to screen men for prostate cancer has a conundrum; Not all prostate cancers need to be treated.
‘Overdiagnosing’ potentially leads to unnecessary worry, as well as treatment that risks men having life-changing side effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence.
Darren, however, suggests that it is worth finding more men at stage 1 or 2, than risk them being found at stage 4, “where treatment is life-extending rather than curative”.
“And then you factor in all the tragedy of the family and the kids and everybody who’s impacted by it,” he says.
“The real bugger about prostate cancer is that it’s symptomless, so when you’ve got it quite badly you will have no idea that you’ve got it.”
Prostate cancer symptoms do not tend to show until the disease has grown or spread.
At this point, clues include finding it difficult to start peeing, having a weak flow of urine, needing to pee urgently.
Other signs are erectile dysfunction, blood in urine and semen, and lower back pain.
Darren added: “I think there are enough people like myself [diagnosed at a] younger age, where there is a need for it.”
Who’s at risk of prostate cancer?
Prostate cancer affects a small, walnut-shaped gland that sits underneath the bladder and surrounds the urethra – the tube carrying pee outside the body.
It usually grows bigger as you get older.
The prostate’s main job is to help make semen – the fluid that carries sperm.
Most men with early prostate cancer don’t have any signs or symptoms – that’s why it’s important to know about your risk.
Possible symptoms include:
- Difficulty starting to urinate or emptying your bladder
- A weak flow when you urinate
- A feeling that your bladder hasn’t emptied properly
- Dribbling urine after you finish urinating
- Needing to urinate more often than usual, especially at night
- A sudden need to urinate – you may sometimes leak urine before you get to the toilet
If you do notice changes in the way you urinate, this is more likely to be a sign of an enlarged prostate, which is very common and non-cancerous.
But it’s still a good idea to get it checked out.
In the UK, about one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
Some factors may mean you’re more likely to get it.
This includes:
- Getting older – it mainly affects men aged 50 or over
- Having a family history of prostate cancer
- Being Black
If you have any of these risk factors or if you have any symptoms, speak to your GP.
They can talk to you about your risk and about the tests that are used to diagnose prostate cancer.
Source: Prostate Cancer UK
