Daffodil Diaries - Ray McGrath

“I got the results of my biopsy in February 2020. I was sitting in the waiting room in Vincent’s for four hours, watching all of these elderly men going in and out for their appointments."

A routine health check led to Ray McGrath receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2020 at age 43. The diagnosis came as a shock to him, as he was fit and healthy and had no symptoms.

“Myself and my mates called the health check a ‘routine NCT’, just to get the lay of the land,” says Ray, who is originally from Galway but lives in Dublin. “There was no real impetus for the test – I felt good, and thought the results would be a good benchmark for years to come.

“I decided to get a blood test to check things like cholesterol. The doctor asked if I wanted my PSA checked too and I said sure, give me the works. In my results, I had a PSA of 15.3, but it should have been in the range of 1 to 2.”

Ray went back to get his PSA retested three weeks after his initial results, and the results showed his PSA had risen to 17. He had a physical prostate exam which didn’t show anything of concern, and he had no signs or symptoms of the disease. He was sent to hospital for further tests to find out the cause of his elevated PSA.

“I was sent to St Vincent’s University Hospital for an MRI, and that showed shading in my prostate, so I had to go for a biopsy,” says Ray. “The biopsy showed I had a Gleason scale of eight, which meant that I could have high grade prostate cancer, and they said I needed to get that looked at."

“I got the results of my biopsy in February 2020. I was sitting in the waiting room in Vincent’s for four hours, watching all of these elderly men going in and out for their appointments. I was getting very restless and thinking that I had to get back to work. I thought they’d say I was fine, that I just had something weird going on with my PSA.

“But when I went in, the consultant had a sober look on his face and there was a leaflet about cancer on his desk. He told me it wasn’t good, and he said he’d not seen this in someone my age before. He told me I had prostate cancer, but I took it well. I just said, ‘OK, that’s fine. What’s the solution? He said they’d be in touch with me regarding next steps. He gave me the pamphlet about cancer, and I just drove home and went back to work.”

It was decided that Ray should have surgery to remove his prostate. The prostate removal surgery was initially scheduled to take place in Vincent’s, but it was cancelled because the pandemic began, and the hospital became a designated Covid hospital. After several weeks of searching for an alternative, Ray found out that the Galway Clinic was still carrying out the surgery he needed. He travelled to Galway for the surgery in May 2020 and recovered well.

“When I got back home from surgery, I walked in my back garden to get my 10,000 steps in and I did my pelvic floor exercises"

During recovery Ray experienced the common side effects of prostate cancer, but with rehabilitation managed to get his pelvic floor strengthened in two months and everything else up and running in four.

“When I got back home from surgery, I walked in my back garden to get my 10,000 steps in and I did my pelvic floor exercises – I did all this because I wanted to get back to normal,” says Ray. “So I got back into a rhythm, did my exercises, I got my catheter out, and I still had a bit of leaking in the evenings when I was tired, but in two months, I was back to normal.”

Ray’s PSA continued to be monitored after his surgery. It started to rise in September 2020, so he underwent radiotherapy which he finished in January 2021. It all appeared stable, until his PSA began to rise again last year.

“Every three months, I’d do a PSA test and it should be zero, but it would go 0.01, 0.04, 0.06,” says Ray. “I managed to keep it in tow, but when it goes past one it becomes significant. My PSA went to 0.08, so my consultant said I needed to get a PSMA scan because it could see cancer before an MRI or CT scan could. I got that done in October 2023, but they didn’t find anything.

“I’m an eternal optimist and I think that, when it comes to prostate cancer, there’ll be a cure in the next few years.”

“They kept on monitoring it, I did another PSMA scan in October 2024, and they found three glowing areas when the cancer had metastasised: two were in my lymph nodes and one was in my spine. Things really sped up a lot after that.”

Ray is still in active treatment for prostate cancer, and he is sharing his story to encourage others to get their PSA checked and to share his approach to living with cancer.

“I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll have this forever, but I’m also resigned to the fact that I’ll be here for another 40 years,” he says. “I’m an eternal optimist and I think that, when it comes to prostate cancer, there’ll be a cure in the next few years.”

Ray adds: “I talked to a friend recently, who told me his dad had died from prostate cancer. I said, ‘Did you do your PSA test?’ and he said no, he’d do it when he turned 50. But if I had done that, I’d have two, maybe three years left.

“I just want people to be aware of prostate cancer and not be afraid of it – if a doctor is taking bloods for something like cholesterol, just ask them to do one for PSA too.”