{"id":124086,"date":"2025-09-06T22:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/124086\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T22:00:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:00:12","slug":"cancer-survivor-says-it-is-time-all-fathers-got-their-prostate-checked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/124086\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancer survivor says it is time all fathers got their prostate checked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim O’Neill remembers the phone call all too well.<\/p>\n

“It was 8 o’clock on a Tuesday night, letting me know that I definitely did have prostate cancer at the very young age of 41,” he said.<\/p>\n

He knew just how serious the call was. His father had died of the disease. That was the reason he’d had a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test in the first place.<\/p>\n

“Your world stops, you know. I was a young father of four very young kids,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We caught our breath, called the kids straight in, and told them what went wrong, which is one of the hardest things ever to say out loud.”<\/p>\n

He said his cancer fight started in that moment.<\/p>\n

“My eight-year-old daughter just threw her arms around me, and said, ‘Daddy, we’ll get through this.'”Side effects and stigma<\/p>\n

Tim’s prostate was removed.<\/p>\n

“There were side effects,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But they do get better. So now, nine years on, I’m in a lot better place than I would have been if I didn’t get that test, that’s for sure.”<\/p>\n

Tim said the toughest part of the journey was the toll it took on his mental health.<\/p>\n

“It took me to some pretty dark places.”<\/p>\n

If you or anyone you know needs help:Suicide Call Back Service<\/a> on 1300 659 467Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN<\/a>\u00a0on 13 92 76Kids Helpline<\/a> on 1800 551 800Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 224 636Headspace<\/a> on 1800 650 890ReachOut<\/a> at au.reachout.com<\/a>MensLine Australia<\/a> on 1300 789 978QLife 1800 184 527<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim now has a blood test every six months.<\/p>\n

“In that month leading into [the blood test], I get anxious \u2026 asking those what-ifs: what’s happened? What if it’s back?”<\/p>\n

Prostate cancer and anxiety go hand in hand, not just because of what might be found, or what might come back, but even about the poking and prodding involved.<\/p>\n

Tim said if the reason men avoided a test was fear of a digital rectal examination, there was some relief.<\/p>\n

“I’ll say it candidly, you’re a few dates in with the doctor before you get anywhere near that,” he laughed.<\/p>\n

But he said there was still a stigma around talk of prostates.<\/p>\n

“There were side effects around your manhood, around your performance as a man for a little while after the surgery,” he said.<\/p>\n

That’s when Ruth Logan joins the conversation and she is unapologetically blunt.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ruth Logan encourages men to focus on their health. (ABC Southern Qld: Peter Gunders)<\/p>\n

“Well, I heard a urologist once say, ‘You don’t need an erection when you’re dead,'” she said.<\/p>\n

Among top causes of cancer deathsDaughter’s plea for men to get a prostate check<\/a><\/p>\n

When Steven Jones was diagnosed with prostate cancer, his daughter Madeline didn’t know anything about Australia’s most diagnosed cancer for males.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an education program facilitator for It’s a Bloke Thing Foundation, Ruth spends her days travelling across rural Queensland and New South Wales, and up into the Northern Territory, in a blue four-wheel drive, talking to men about an issue they’d sometimes rather avoid.<\/p>\n

But she says Aussie men can’t afford to ignore it.<\/p>\n

According to Cancer Australia, prostate cancer was the most diagnosed cancer in Australia in 2020<\/a> and, in 2022, it was the third most common cause of cancer death in Australia.<\/p>\n

“The biggest problem for blokes is that they wait till there’s a problem before they go to the doctor, particularly rural men,” Ruth said.<\/p>\n

“They’re typically the sort of blokes that spend more time on maintenance of their machinery, their fishing tackle, their caravans, their motorbikes, their cotton picker than they would think about putting any time into looking after their own health.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Ruth Logan says her car is a mobile prostate-cancer awareness “office”. (ABC Southern Qld: Peter Gunders)<\/p>\n

“The thing about prostate cancer is that, in the early stages when it’s very treatable, it usually doesn’t have any symptoms.”<\/p>\n

It’s why she circles back to the PSA blood test.<\/p>\n

“Chat with family to find out if anyone had prostate cancer and, if you don’t know your family history, then still go at 40,” she said.<\/p>\n

Brighter future<\/p>\n

In the oncology wing at the Toowoomba Base Hospital, Jo Hiscock talks prostates every day, usually with men who have had a similar phone call to Tim’s.<\/p>\n

She is one of two prostate cancer specialist nurses for the Darling Downs region.<\/p>\n

Part of her job is advocating for prostate cancer awareness.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jo Hiscock\u00a0says, in the future, medicine will be more tailored to the individual. (ABC Southern Qld: Peter Gunders)<\/p>\n

“Some of the tests have taken a long time to get on to Medicare,” she said.<\/p>\n

“But a few politicians have unfortunately got prostate cancer, which is not great, but it is good for them to be aware of what’s needed.”<\/p>\n

Funding for Ms Hiscock’s position comes from the annual It’s a Bloke Thing Foundation luncheon held at the Wellcamp Airport.<\/p>\n

The not-for-profit group has raised more than $15 million for research and awareness, and this year announced Australia’s first mobile PSA blood-testing service \u2014 in partnership with Heart of Australia \u2014 would begin soon.<\/p>\n

Ms Hiscock said the future was looking brighter for men.<\/p>\n

“A lot of the treatment that’s coming is to do with their genomics,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It’ll be medicine tailored to the person \u2026 and when we get prostate cancer at an early stage, we will only be treating that part of the prostate, and [will] not have to take the whole prostate [out].”<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, the message is for men to make the first move.<\/p>\n

“Be a proud father, go and get a test,” Tim said.<\/p>\n

“Give your kids your PSA number for Father’s Day \u2026 we’ve got a lot to live for.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tim O’Neill remembers the phone call all too well. “It was 8 o’clock on a Tuesday night, letting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,1617,11890,15128,77078,137,87169,3017,53487,27993,337],"class_list":["post-124086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cancer","tag-dads","tag-fathers","tag-fathers-day","tag-health","tag-its-a-bloke-thing","tag-men","tag-prostate","tag-psa","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}