The holy grail of prostate cancer has been revealed – how men can actually get it. This is huge and I was there when it was announced. It was quite an unforgettable evening, one I shall not forget in a hurry.

I was in church the other day, just minding my business as you do, and I saw someone that I knew. I am not using the term friend as other than church we do not socialise but we do always greet each other. He smiled and we shook hands and he said he had seen my testimony and it was very powerful. He asked me how I was doing. I smiled back and said I was fine, the recovery takes a long time but that I am fine.

I asked him if he had been tested. He looked me in the eyes but didn’t say anything and I thought with the background noise going on that perhaps he didn’t hear me, so I repeated the question. He then gave me a look that I had never seen on a human before but a few seconds in and I realised that I had seen that look on a television.

He had gone into standby mode.

It was the only way I could describe it. The power button was on but everything else had shut down.

After about twenty seconds, which really seemed like an eternity, someone pressed the remote or it was one heck of a reboot.

“You know I don’t believe in that thing there, you know. You see I believe that the Devil puts that thing into people’s head and if they believe it then they have it!”

It was my turn to pause but not quite the complete shutdown. It was more of a lesson in seething containment.

If I was to research this man’s family tree I’m sure his great, great, great grandfather Ebineezer J Dumbchurchfoolbrute would have denounced my cursed bloodline, beaten, tarred and burnt me at the stake by now. Perhaps I should consider myself lucky.

Had I just heard correctly. Had he just said that I had willed this condition on myself?

Now I found myself stopped at the traffic lights on a crossroad which had a number of options. Two of the roads were variations of me telling him what I thought of him, his idea and where he could put it prostate cancer style – one version much more colourful and animated than the other. However, there was a big white celestial arrow glowing right in front of my windscreen telling me to take this particular route straight ahead and do not detour. It was now flashing and shaking angrier as I tightened my grip on the wheel like I was going to pull a mad sudden left or right and disobey the road sign.

“Well I believe God made that man a plumber, me an IT guy and that guy over there a doctor. He gave each of us a skill for a reason. The guy that’s a doctor is there to help us for a reason. God made him a doctor”

He had moved from the previous standby mode to resembling the Starship Enterprise after a surprise attack and the computer shutting down all of the ships systems other than life support. I had no idea if the Dylithium crystals were ever going to regenerate and save the ship.

“Well, all I can say is get tested.” Then I promptly walked off, shaking my head with the hope this nonsense would fall out of my ear. I was in a state of half disbelief, half offence and a sprinkling of disgust. Unfortunately, my attempts at trying to pretend that the conversation never happened did not entirely work and it took a few days to take the sting out of it.

So the third biggest killer of men worldwide is caused by men willing it on themselves?

Yeah that makes a whole lot of sense now, how silly of me! Let’s get the Lancet on the phone right now, how could they have missed this? This will save millions from the discomfort, misery and pain from this life changing condition across the world. Thankfully 99.9% of the churches and the people within them have been incredibly supportive and understand that faith and medicine go hand in hand. Additionally, none would advocate stopping medical treatment completely and just relying on faith.

Only two facts came out of this encounter. ‘Slap a pig in the face with a brick (preferably hard) and he will not build you a patio or put the brick back in your hand.’

Fast forward a few days and I was really looking forward to taking my self-afflicted, devil assisted, cancerous self to my first cancer survivors meeting with Black Cancer Care. It meets on the first Saturday of each month, just round the corner from my mums house as it happens. I had been invited a month or so previously by a woman that had heard about my testimony but I could not attend.

I arrived earlier than I thought I would, so I decided to visit my mums. I was sitting there, minding my own business as you do. Boss mum had just finished her tabloid enlightenment, so of course it was impolite not to share.

“What drugs are you buying from the Internet?  You know they are not safe don’t you?” She had put the paper down and was looking me straight in the face as opposed to an offhand comment to the room so this was serious.

I didn’t see this one coming, over my Greggs sandwich. I had no idea what she was going on about.

“Erm, what are you going on about? I have not bought any drugs from anywhere”

“Are you sure? You said you bought some bags of medicine from the internet”

I still had no idea what she was going on about. Had she not mentioned the word bag I would have copied my devil bashing friend and gone into standby mode hoping that she would forget what she was talking about. It took me a minute to take a stab in the dark.

“Are you talking about the bags of flack seed that I ordered?” I queried. That was months ago. I had ordered a couple of bags of flaxseed in my healthier eating drive. I made the mistake of opening the package with Boss mum standing there because it had come in a ridiculously sized box, like it was being used by people smugglers.

Opioids, prescription medicines, rubbish tabloid newspaper, flak seed. Based on my previous church devil bashing I was not going to try and guess the mathematics behind the association.

“That’s not medicine, it’s health food. Why on earth would you think I’m silly enough to buy medicine from the internet? Aside from the fact that I don’t take any medicine anyway”

“Well I’m just saying you don’t know what you are buying from there, so you need to be careful and only get your medicine from the doctors”

With that important nugget of information still ringing in my ears, I went off to my meeting.

The door was opened by Janice, who I had been speaking to a few weeks earlier. We were in the offices of an ‘Help the Aged’ group. We shook hands and she led me downstairs to meet the others. About twenty five chairs were arranged in a circle. It was still ten minutes before the official start so there were only five people seated so far. We started at ten past two, the group had grown to about fifteen. The format was we all had a chance to introduce ourselves and then we had a key speaker. This week we had a woman who was not just going to talk about a strictly plant based diet and it’s benefits but she was actually living it as well.

There were five men in total and the rest were women. I don’t know who was the youngest but the gentleman next to me was ninety one. That was a shocker as I would have said he was in his early seventies. He spends the first half on the year in the UK and the other half in the Caribbean. It would make you wonder if he was there to shove that fact in our faces or if he was really a survivor. He would later reveal that he was indeed undergoing treatment for bowel cancer that was going well. Two of the other men had recovered from prostate cancer (shame on them for making arrangements with the devil as well) and the other had bowel cancer I think. Most of the women had breast cancer and some others that I could not keep track of.

The group members continued to trickle in so by the time each of us had spoken about who we were and what had bought us there, there was only about half an hour of the meeting left. The keynote speaker introduced herself. Let’s call her the Herbalist. The Herbalist has breast cancer but was suspicious of the medicine she was receiving. One in particular had very bad side effects for her which led her to make her own investigations. She said the name of a couple of the drugs she had taken and some of the women nodded in sad agreement.

She mentioned a couple of doctors that she was a big fan of and their work. I am a bit vague about the exact routine as I have my personal view on all this as some of you may know and wasn’t writing it down. Anyway, she has a cup of soursop (otherwise known as Graviola) tea. One of the prostate cancer guys who I would later find out is a walking encyclopaedia on health foods, treatments and conspiracy theories cut into her conversation. Let’s respectfully call him the Professor. The Professor said she needed to include the root and leaves in the tea. She then added that she has a supply of under the counter CBD or Cannabis Oil to me and you. She puts 2 drops under her tongue daily. The Professor said it should be four. She also crushes 2 apricot kernels daily. The Professor said to be careful as four or more could be dangerous.

The Herbalist read a list of other things she was taking and more of her routine. Big Pharma (Large Pharmaceutical companies) were corrupt and were not really interested in healing. The Professor added that twenty five herbalists had been killed in LA alone. He didn’t say if this was from  disgruntled cancer sufferers that had been financially bled dry, on the hopes of a cure, or a Big Pharma conspiracy. The Herbalist didn’t say that there had been a medical turnaround or breakthrough in her cancer but she felt better and that her energy levels were high. She was still taking some of the medicine. Then before we knew it, we had reached the end of the meeting.

Roy, the co-host of the group, asked me what I thought of my first meeting. I told him of my views and recent experiences regarding herbal treatments. He listened but didn’t offer an opinion either way. What he did do however was make a statement that I had never actually thought of before but was fundamental.

In the Caribbean all of these herbs, fruits and spices are readily available. Most of them are even free in the countryside where they grow in the wild. Yet the Caribbean has one of the highest rates of cancers in the world.

Food for thought.