Online Reporter
LONDON. – When Alastair Munro noticed a small lump on his manhood was starting to get bigger he suspected he was dealing with something serious.
He put off going to the doctor for about six weeks but as soon as the GP saw him he was told it was likely to be cancer.
“It was quite a bold thing to say,” Alastair, 49, said. “I was shocked. He couldn’t say 100% but he thought it was cancer.
“A week later the urologist at Raigmore said the same thing. Then it was just the case of getting a biopsy.”
Three months after first noticing the lump, Alastair, a construction engineer from Inverness, received confirmation that it was penile cancer – a rare condition.
“I was pretty shocked but had been confident it was cancer,” he told BBC Scotland News.
“I’d never, ever heard of this kind of cancer before. Things moved pretty quickly after that.”
A CT scan confirmed that the cancer was spreading.
The complex procedure involved the removal of the tumour and 30% of Alastair’s manhood in a seven-hour operation.
The cancer had spread to lymph nodes in Alastair’s groin, so they also had to be removed. His manhood was then reconstructed using a skin graft from his thigh.
Six weeks later, Alastair had to go under the knife for a further three-and-a-half hours after results from the first surgery showed a small amount of tumour was still present.
There was a 50% chance that the cancer would spread to his pelvic area.
“They can’t actually tell if its cancerous until they get inside you,” he said. “What they actually do is cut away the cancerous nodes and check them straight away. They are basically just digging through you.
“They keep going until they find the end of the cancer. It sounds pretty primitive but that’s what they’re doing. It’s quite amazing really.”
Alastair then underwent a month of radiotherapy and was given the all-clear in February. He can’t currently have sex or urinate properly because he has developed lymphedema as a complication of the surgery and radiotherapy.
This involves swelling of the skin.
Alastair is likely to have reconstructive plastic surgery to improve this in about a year’s time.
He has been warned that there is a high chance the cancer will return within two years. Alastair’s lump was on the head of his manhood. It wasn’t painful but grew, and at one point he noticed blood.
Alastair – who has been back at work for five-and-half months – admits he will probably watch his surgery again when the programme airs. “I want to thank the surgeons and all the staff at the Western General in Edinburgh and the district nurses,” he said.
“The treatment I got was unbelievable. I can’t fault it at all. I can’t thank the NHS enough.
“Dr Shukla basically saved my life.” – BBC
