Non-League Day this weekend partnered with Prostate Cancer UK – and that’s a poignant cause for Hinckley fan Nick Gay.
Nick will be a familiar face to many at Kirkby Road and has been a supporter of Hinckley since 1980 through Athletic, United and now AFC.
Without any Hinckley matches to watch between November 2020 and August 2021, fans won’t have noticed him missing from games and may not have had chance to hear his story.
But as a member and supporter, he wanted to take up the opportunity this weekend, when Non-League Day partners with Prostate Cancer UK, to share his Prostate Cancer worry.
And he hopes it will encourage others to get checked too.
Nick takes up the story. “At the back end of 2020 I was suffering with a bad back and contacted the doctor. I got a face to face appointment, a rarity at that time, we discussed symptoms and she sent me for a blood test.
“She said there was nothing showing except my PSA reading was up a notch. No mention of my prostate so far. She then sent me for an MRI scan which showed I had an enlarged prostate. That’s nothing out the ordinary at my age but, and a big but, there was a shadow so I was sent for a biopsy.
“This was uncomfortable as they took 19 samples. Two weeks later I was told I had cancer – worrying, but treatable.”
Nick has now been treated and is in remission, but will be tested over the next five years for any further problems.
But he’s urging men to get checked out to make sure they can treat it as early as he did.
“I had no symptoms as such but I had a level 3.9 cancer. Level 4 is really serious.
“Until this is scanned regularly like the breast cancer programme, we are going to be losing men who are completely unaware of the problem until it’s too late.
“I was told that I was very lucky. Another few months and it would have been extremely serious.
“So please get out there guys and get checked.”
