Former British prime minister David Cameron has revealed he has been diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer after being urged to take a test by his wife, Samantha, last year.
Speaking to The Times, Cameron, 59, explained how his wife initially urged him to seek a check via his GP after both Camerons heard a radio interview in which Soho House founder Nick Jones told of how a test detected his own prostate cancer.
Former British prime minister David Cameron, pictured in May.Credit: Getty
After taking a prostate-specific antigen test (PSA), which looks for proteins associated with prostate cancer, Cameron said his results came back worryingly high, and a biopsy eventually confirmed cancer.
“You have an MRI scan with a few black marks on it. You think, ‘Ah, that’s probably OK,’ Cameron told The Times. But when a doctor had confirmed he had cancer, “you always dread hearing those words. And then literally as they’re coming out of the doctor’s mouth, you’re thinking, ‘Oh, no, he’s going to say it. He’s going to say it. Oh God, he said it.’”
Loading
Cameron said he then faced a decision to watch and wait to determine how fast his cancer was growing, or potentially undergo treatment, which can have serious side effects such as erectile dysfunction and incontinence.
He told The Times he was aware that his older brother, Alexander, had died at the same age of pancreatic cancer, which, he said, “focuses the mind”.
Cameron said he decided to move ahead with treatment, and eventually opted for a less intrusive “focal” therapy, which uses electric pulses delivered by needles to eliminate cancerous cells.
He said he was now backing a call by the British charity Prostate Cancer to offer all high-risk older men screening for a disease which kills about 12,000 men a year in the UK.