
Grandad says 'all men should do one thing' after cancer diagnosis
Nick was fit, healthy and active with no symptoms when he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer
Nick James decided he should probably have a Wellman check-up
(Image: Cover Images )
An active, fit and healthy grandad who ate healthily, never smoked and never drank decided to go for a check-up when he his his 60s - and was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Nick James had no symptoms, but a routine blood test showed an elevated PSA level of 4.5.
Further tests showed that Nick, 64, had a 30mm tumour on the prostate, and he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. 'I had hardly ever had to visit a doctor in my life,' said Nick, who works in the meat industry and lives in Southport.
'Suddenly I was having 16 biopsies along my lymph nodes and the cancer had already escaped out of the prostate. Someone was looking over me, because I decided off my own back to go and get a fitness check — I didn't have any symptoms.'
Nick had a prostatectomy and all lymph nodes removed. A year after that he had a bit of back pain and a tumour was discovered at the base of his spine, so he had radiotherapy.
Then, last December, he thought he had sciatica, but then discovered he had two tumours on his spine pressing on his nerves. After more medication and radiotherapy, after more pain in his right femur, Nick discovered he now had bone cancer.
Despite his diagnoses, Nick, who has seven grandchildren, is determined to stay positive and enjoy life to the full. 'I just tell myself, 'I haven't got cancer',' Nick said.
Article continues below
'The medics can only do so much and you've got to play your part as well. You can sit there and wallow in it or you can play your part and you try and beat it. We enjoy life with all the grandkids and the family and make the most of it.
'I'm taking all the family to Center Parcs in May, then in July we're holidaying in the Lake District to do some walking to keep strong and healthy. That's how I've always lived life. I've never been a downer.
'You go through challenges in life, whether it's work-wise or whatever. But it's down to you to sort it out and you get on with it.'
Nick is determined to raise awareness of prostate cancer and encourage all men of all ages to have a blood test at their local medical centre, whether they have symptoms or not. He's now cycling 40 miles a week to prepare for the Chris Hoy Tour de 4, a 56-mile fundraising charity bike ride taking place in September 2025 to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK.
"If I hadn't have gone for that blood test I wouldn't be here today,' Nick explains. 'If men go for a routine blood test it also checks for cholesterol or diabetes. So it's a win win going as if you're all clear on all three, it's happy days but if they pick up on something early, it makes a massive difference in treatment and cure.
'I can't praise the NHS enough for the tremendous service I've received over the last four years, despite the negative press they often receive. All I do is carry on and make the most of life — I'm not old and decrepit, I'm still fit as a fiddle.
'I now have one session of chemo every three weeks, and they also give me a bone infusion for half an hour to keep the bones strong so they don't go brittle. I just keep taking the medication and keeping fit and healthy.
'I want to tell all men, whether they have symptoms or not: once you hit 50, just go and get checked. If there's a history of prostate cancer in a family, then they should be checking the male side of the family a lot earlier than 60 years of age.
'I'm the first in our family and I didn't have any symptoms. It's quite rare, but it does prove a point, doesn't it? I'm a bit like Chris Hoy: someone who's fit and healthy. You don't expect it. A few years ago I did a coast to coast cycle ride raising money for our local Hospice. I cycled to the east coast and back, cycling 308 miles in 28 hours.
Article continues below
'Now I'm cycling the Chris Hoy Tour de 4 to raise money for and awareness of prostate cancer. Life goes on: You don't give up just because you have the big C. You've got to just keep going and stay positive.'
Donate to Nick's fundraiser here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/my-tour-de-4-fundraiser-to-fight-cancer-55zfs

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
NHS consultant spoke to trans row witness despite warnings
An NHS consultant has admitted that she spoke to a potential witness despite being warned not to do so during an investigation into an altercation between a transgender doctor and a nurse.A healthcare assistant was alleged to have witnessed a separate incident involving nurse Sandie Peggie and Dr Beth Upton, days before they were involved in an encounter in a changing room at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy on Christmas Eve questioning from Ms Peggie's lawyer at a tribunal, Dr Kate Searle admitted that talking to the witness had been a "flagrant breach" of previous warnings not to discuss the she denied claims that she "left confidentiality in ruins" with her actions. Ms Peggie was suspended from work with NHS Fife after she told Dr Upton - a trans woman - not to be in the women's changing rooms. Dr Searle, who was Dr Upton's line manager, became involved with the case on 29 December and helped file a report on the NHS's datex complaints this period Dr Upton also accused Ms Peggie of walking out on treating a patient earlier in December due to the junior doctor's Searle later spoke to a healthcare assistant who was alleged to have witnessed this incident. However, the woman could not remember details of a conversation between Ms Peggie and Dr Upton. Dr Searle said she could not recall whether she had this conversation before or after Angela Glancy - a senior charge nurse involved in the investigation - had spoken to the Peggie's lawyer Naomi Cunningham said if Dr Searle had spoken to the witness before investigators it would be "grossly improper" added: "What possible business did you have making contact with the witness, who was a witness to a live investigation or pending employment tribunal proceedings?"Dr Searle replied "no business".The consultant said she "probably" spoke to the healthcare assistant after Dr Glancy had done so, but could not be sure as "times have blurred into one" during the later admitted that speaking to the witness was a "flagrant breach" of previous warnings not to discuss the case. Dr Searle became emotional after Ms Cunningham named the healthcare worker, saying that the person involved was desperate to avoid any media had to leave the stand at that point, which Ms Cunningham later dubbed "an outburst". The lawyer suggested the emotion was not to do with any concern for the healthcare assistant but out of "a desire to protect yourself."Dr Searle denied this, and NHS Fife's lawyer Jane Russell said Ms Cunningham's questions on the matter "left a little to be desired". Timeline of the Sandie Peggie tribunal Giving evidence for a second day, Dr Searle was again quizzed regarding emails exchanged between senior staff in the aftermath of the Christmas Eve Cunningham focused on one message said to mention avoiding "foot in mouth syndrome" and that not all messages had been provided to the added Dr Searle's search for emails related to the case had either been "surprisingly incompetent or deliberately withholding" the Searle said she rejected the latter Cunningham accused Dr Searle of "turning up the emotional heat" with how she reported the incident in the replied that she had reported the incident as she saw it, with a junior doctor upset about something that had happened at Searle had told the tribunal on Tuesday she considered reporting the matter to Police Scotland as it could be considered a hate Cunningham asked Dr Searle if she would have recognised Dr Upton as trans if she had not been told, and claimed the junior doctor was "obviously male".The lawyer added that the Christmas Eve incident could have been resolved by Dr Upton leaving the changing room, rather than telling Ms Peggie to speak to management about Searle said she disagreed this would have been a suitable way to end the tribunal continues.


Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The truth behind the autism curve
In the year 2000, autism was considered a very rare condition, affecting just 1 in 150 British children. Now it's seen as common. According to a 2021 estimate from Newcastle University, as many as one in 57 British children are on the autistic spectrum. Those figures don't even touch on the number of people who have been diagnosed with autism in adulthood, or have come to the conclusion that they are autistic without having an official diagnosis. In March 2024, there were 89,531 open referrals for autism diagnoses for adults on the NHS, demonstrating just how dramatically perceptions of this condition have changed. Are people actually more likely to be autistic today than they were 25 years ago, or are they simply just more likely to be diagnosed as such? It's complicated, says Professor Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Aston University in Birmingham and a world-leading expert on autism. In the US, but also in Britain, there's 'a lot of self-diagnosing going on', she believes, which skews the picture: 'You don't need to register [in official statistics] to proclaim that you have autism on social media.' But when you look at how autism has been diagnosed in previous decades, it should be no surprise that some people have claimed the label for themselves, she says. 'Lots of autistic people have gone undiagnosed for years, many of them women and girls, because of fixed views of what autism is,' says Rippon. In recent years 'the idea of what autism is has become much more inclusive, but at the same time, it has also become much harder to pin down'. How has our understanding of autism changed? Today, autism is defined as 'a developmental disorder characterised by difficulties in social interaction, communication, and repetitive patterns of behaviour', according to the ICD-10, the diagnostic manual used in Britain and many countries around the world to assess people for autism and ADHD, as well as most health problems. But in the past, doctors – like many people outside the profession – had a fixed expectation of what constituted autism in a patient. It was typically thought of as a disability that severely impeded communication, which would mean that people with it needed to attend special needs schools and could never live independently. Cases of 'high-functioning' autism believed to be rare. These people would often be highly intelligent, but they would struggle to make eye contact, be uninterested in socialising and have few friends, and have little empathy for others – and inevitably, they'd be male. In Britain in 2000, four men were diagnosed as autistic for every one woman. When Rippon first began her work, in the 1970s, when it came to autism, 'people weren't looking at women,' she says. 'They couldn't find any to study who had been diagnosed, or at least there were too few to make up a reasonable sample for research.' Modern science suggests that there may be nearly as many autistic women as men, however. Rippon says previously girls might have been diagnosed 'with eating disorders or anxiety'. 'There is some recent research to demonstrate that women are making up the bulk of adulthood diagnoses,' she adds. These days, some experts like Rippon believe that adult women display a type of autism that is less easy to spot under the current diagnostic criteria. 'Autistic women are often desperate to be social and really want to belong, but they don't have the same social instincts as other people and struggle to understand social rules,' she explains. Women with autism may also be more likely to 'mask' their symptoms than men, which can take a toll emotionally. 'It's not that these are two different conditions, and it's also not a prescriptive rule,' Rippon notes. Some autistic men, many of whom might be highly intelligent and successful, display these behaviours too, and may also not have been diagnosed as children. The decision to fold Asperger's into Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Asperger's syndrome used to be a diagnosis of its own, within the umbrella of autism, but the two were merged in 2013 to create a single diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Though Asperger's is often thought of as 'mild' or high-functioning autism, it was formally defined as 'autism without any delay in language abilities,' says Geoffrey Bird, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oxford. In practice, 'no one was using Asperger's correctly as a diagnosis, so it got thrown out,' he says. On top of that, autism has only been conceptualised as a 'spectrum' since the 1990s. The idea that autistic people can have a range of symptoms is also relatively new. 'A statistic that's always quoted is that autism diagnoses have risen by 787 per cent since 1998,' says Rippon. The decision to fold Asperger's into ASD was 'slightly political', she believes, and it also coincided with widespread internet use and the much greater awareness of autism that came with it. 'People in general, but especially teachers, have become much more aware of autism without intellectual disabilities, so children might be more likely to be referred for autism assessments and adults might be more likely to seek them out,' Bird says. Diagnosing autism is complex Unlike Rippon, Bird doesn't believe that autistic women 'tend to have a specific type of autism that previously we've been bad at spotting', though he agrees with Rippon that 'it might be the case that clinicians were previously biased against diagnosing women, which I think has changed'. More than anything else, he says, autism has become much less stigmatised, which is a positive for people with the condition, but can occasionally prove unhelpful for clinicians. On one hand, 'people who ought to have been diagnosed in the past are now seeking diagnosis and receiving support,' he says. On the other, 'I've heard from at least two clinicians that some patients who might better suit a different diagnosis, like borderline personality disorder, refuse to engage with clinicians when they are labelled in this way, but will engage once they're diagnosed with autism, as they feel that it's a less stigmatised label,' Bird says. 'I've also worked with HR professionals who have found that people suddenly produce autism diagnoses after they are accused of misconduct,' he adds. 'There are a million things that could make you behave in a way that looks like you're autistic, and it's very easy to fake. Certainly there are people who are being diagnosed with autism who shouldn't be, as well as many who should.' Every person with autism is different It isn't that rogue doctors are handing out labels to help people get away with bad behaviour. Rather, even world-leading experts disagree on what autism actually is and can find it hard to formally diagnose. The famous 'mind in the eyes test', developed by the Cambridge University Autism Research Centre, which asks people to guess another person's feelings from a picture of their eyes alone – something that autistic people were assumed to find hard, or even impossible – has been used for years to explain what autism is and who has it. It is based on the theory that autistic people struggle to read others' minds. But struggling to read others' emotions, to hold eye contact and empathise with other people, ' is actually a separate condition in itself, called alexythymia,' Bird says. Just half of autistic people display alexythymia, he believes, and non-autistic people can have it too. Professor Jen Cook, from the University of Birmingham, believes that autism could also have a lot to do with our bodies as well as our brains and how we empathise with others. 'There's a mathematical principle called the minimum jerk equation, which says that humans move in the most fluid way possible, and we used to believe that this applied to everyone. Now there is evidence that autistic people tend not to move in this minimally jerky way,' Cook says. 'In adults with autism, a lot of clinicians comment that their movements look similar to how people move when they have Parkinson's disease.' In future, she believes, assessments of how autistic adults move could be used as a diagnostic tool. This feature of the condition could even underlie some symptoms, 'as autistic people often struggle to imitate how other people move, or their facial expressions, which could be to do with the same mechanisms that cause them to move differently,' Cook explains. 'But that's not to say that all autistic people move in this way – just that it's common,' she adds. This is an example of the huge challenge that comes with diagnosing autism in children and adults alike: modern research increasingly points to the fact that it's a condition with no single symptom common to everyone who has it. There is also no blood test or brain scan that can be used to reach an objective conclusion. 'There are many ways that you can come to an autism diagnosis,' says Cook. This process can currently include assessments of everything from a person's ability to empathise, to the intensity of their personal interests, to how much rapport a clinician feels with them. Where one clinician might think that someone is clearly autistic, another would let them go without a diagnosis. Should autism be diagnosed in adults? Now that we understand the true scope of what autism can be, is it worth diagnosing the condition in adulthood at all? 'I've been overwhelmed by the number of people who have told me that finally having a diagnosis has been life-changing in a positive way,' says Rippon. 'It's not that people are waking up and wanting to adopt a label that they think is fashionable. Often, it's a way to make sense of life – and for people who are diagnosed in their thirties, forties or fifties, often those are lives that have been very difficult without that self-knowledge.' As for why there seem to be more autistic adults these days than there were in previous decades, 'I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that autism itself is becoming more common,' says Bird. 'I don't buy claims that it's all down to vaccines and chemicals in our water' and he also does not find the arguments that screen time or food additives cause autism to be convincing. The condition has a large genetic component, with almost 800 genes believed to be involved in determining whether someone is autistic. In a family where one child has been diagnosed with autism, the chance that one of their siblings will also be autistic is 20 per cent, much higher than the best estimate for the rate of autism in the general adult population, which is believed to be between 1 and 3 per cent globally. Perhaps the increase in awareness of autism in recent years, and the improved treatment of autistic people that has come with it, simply means that 'more autistic people are finding happy relationships and having children as a result,' Bird says. Surely that is no bad thing.

Scotsman
5 hours ago
- Scotsman
Fresh investment into innovative service is ‘game-changing' for improved care in the community
Major new investment in an innovative approach to helping provide better care in the community is set to be a 'game-changer' for Scotland's growing frail population, according to a formal NHS partner. Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... InnoScot Health believes that the announcement of a fresh £85m government boost to the specialist Hospital at Home service – supporting expansion to 2,000 virtual beds across Scotland by December 2026 – will make a significant improvement to many lives. Head of Innovation at InnoScot Health, Robert Rea said: 'Thanks to personalised, remote, real-time technology, the Hospital at Home service provides high-quality, patient-centred care for frail people living in their own homes, avoids unnecessary hospital stays, and frees up capacity. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'With some 35 per cent of the population over 65 identified as mildly frail, 15 per cent moderately frail, and five per cent severely frail, the need for acceleration of dedicated, targeted innovation is clear. Head of Innovation at InnoScot Health, Robert Rea 'Now, thanks to this timely further investment, I believe we are increasingly turning the tide in Scotland's efforts to deliver innovation-driven improvements in better managing and coordinating care in the community and striking the right balance with social care and hospitals.' Injuries caused by falls are thought to be a leading cause of hospital admissions for those over 75 – with the number of people in that category projected to grow by 340,000 over the next 25 years – but Hospital at Home tech means that many of those falls can be avoided. The fresh multi-million-pound boost comes in tandem with the national rollout of specialist frailty services across all 30 of Scotland's A&E departments by the end of this summer, a move aimed at reducing waiting lists and the duration of hospital stays. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Announcing the additional investment during a visit to NHS Forth Valley's Hospital at Home service, First Minister John Swinney said it would help to 'ensure many patients can receive first class NHS care in the comfort of their own homes and not have to travel to a hospital where it isn't required'. He insisted that the expansion would also be aimed at 'improving the flow of patients throughout the NHS and generating greater capacity for staff'. Amongst frailty-targeting homegrown tech is the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS). The judgement-based tool helps assess illnesses, function, thinking and understanding to generate a frailty score for further assessment. CFS is available on the Right Decision Service – a 'Once for Scotland' source of digital tools enabling people to make quick and safe decisions based on validated evidence. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad InnoScot Health initially worked in partnership with the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) to help develop the Right Decision Service, which was then launched by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS). InnoScot Health now has legal manufacturer responsibility for calculators, software, and decision support tools that are integrated into the Right Decision Service. Robert continued: 'We know that innovation is a vital asset for improving frailty services, and we can help support NHS Scotland staff in identifying and developing solutions which not only change lives but also realise time and cost savings which can be redeployed back into the health service. 'Inspiring and encouraging the healthcare workforce to come forward with ideas which shift the focus from acute to community is key to the future of NHS Scotland.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad