Olympian Kriss Akabusi has hailed Sir Chris Hoy as a “brave British lion” and revealed that he has also been treated for prostate cancer.
He said on GB News: “I was very fortunate. Mine was very, very early. Unfortunately for Sir Chris Hoy, his was at stage four. Mine was at stage one.
“Initially, what brought my attention to it was that, I’m trying to be delicate here, but in my seminal fluid there were traces of pinkishness that my lady friend noticed.
“I then went to my doctor, who did a simple PSA [blood] test and it showed that my PSA was above normal. I came back four weeks later, and it had rocketed up, and straight away they recognised that there was an issue.
“And as I said, I was very fortunate. Mine was stage one, and I had something called brachytherapy, which are radioactive seeds which really shrunk the prostate, and I am now cancer free.
“It is such a very important thing for young men to get checked.
“Chris Hoy, this brave British lion who's a multiple golden Olympic champion. If you look at him, he's a picture of health, just looks phenomenal.”
On his own diagnosis, he said: “It was only the last couple of years. I had my operation in January 2022. We’d come out of the pandemic and throughout the pandemic years nobody got tested.
“I shudder to think what would have happened if I had these symptoms. There were no opportunities to go to the hospital because we were obviously dealing with a pandemic, and then four years later I could have been, God forbid, in Sir Chris Hoy’s position.”
He added: “There is a little bit of the macho culture still around with us, and certainly in my generation. I'm at the back end of it, 65, but even when 45 to 65 we can deal with it.
“I wouldn't have gone if my lady friend had insisted you need to check this out…it was her insistence that made me go, but don't wait for your lady friend to force you to go.
“Don't be a dead hero. You don't need to do that. Any sort of signs, it could be blood, it could be a difficulty in urinating. That's a very good sign that something's wrong down there.
“If you go to the toilet three or four times a night, you're not emptying your bladder, that could be your prostate swollen to such a size that it's mitigating against you going through your normal functions.
“Go and get yourself sorted because the PSA test is very, very simple.”
WATCH THE CLIP ABOVE FOR MORE
