Tell your prostate story

Have you been affected by benign prostatic hyperplasia, prostate cancer or prostatitis? If you have please tell us your story, it may help other men suffering from the same condition. We publish them on this website but also in our newsletter Update so we can spread the word further. Visit the prostate stories section of our prostate information pages to read some that have been submitted.

Prostate stories also help us to promote awareness of prostate disease outside of our own sphere of influence. Andrew Lloyd Webber has recently been a very famous example of how sharing your experience of prostate disease in the press can help to raise public awareness, but it does not always have to be a well-known name.

And you don't necessarily have to have a prostate to make it helpful to others. If a member of your family or someone close to you has been diagnosed with a prostate disease, it can be useful to see the other side of the coin for people in the same position as you and patients alike.

We can publish stories anonymously and they don't have to carry a picture but readers can often identify more with the story if you do.

What to do next

If you would like to tell us your prostate story, please email hello@prostateaction.org.uk

Some tips for your stories

• The facts about PSA levels and Gleason scores are important but try to add something about how you felt at the time or how you feel now. It's the emotion that people will identify with.
• Explain how you were treated by people as you were treated from the point of diagnosis and if this made dealing with your prostate disease easier or harder. We hear so many conflicting stories about 'postcode lotteries' in the health service that hearing what has really happened can be a breath of fresh air.
• Try to keep your story to less than 1,000 words - but there is no lower limit. Reading on websites is often better if the stories are shorter. In fact, you might not even want to write a story. Maybe some poetry or a play. We'd love to be the first website to publish a prostate disease haiku.
• If you can, include as many details about yourself as you don't mind sharing with others. Your name, age, general area where you live (a county is fine), any family, whether you're married or not, children, occupation, even lifestyle can all help to add context to your story. Has prostate disease affected any of these things? And don't forget that a picture can tell a thousand words.

 

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