BBC radio presenter Bill Buckley has announced that he has been treated for prostate cancer. The broadcasting legend, who has been at the BBC since the 1980s, also co-presented BBC TV's That's Life programme with Esther Rantzen in that decade. He revealed he was treated with HIFU as part of a clinical trial.
Buckley was taken to A&E with pains in his leg, where doctors told him he had "one of the biggest blood clots, the biggest deep vein thromboses, that they had ever seen". He was later prescribed blood thinners, leading him to believe he was "out of the woods". But a nurse then told him he had prostate cancer as he prepared to leave his appointment.
Diagnosis and treatment
Buckley said: "She was a lovely nurse, and I don't blame her for saying it that way because I think she absolutely assumed 100% that I did know this, but it had been picked up in the various tests. Suddenly my world crashed back down again."
He added: "I'd never looked into prostate cancer, and I think it's very important people remember this, the majority of men die with, rather than of, prostate cancer. It very often just sits there, minds its own business for decades. You don't even know you've got it."
Buckley had regular check-ups over the next few months for doctors to monitor the cancer's progression, but he was told it had grown larger and he needed treatment.
HIFU treatment
He underwent HIFU treatment in Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, expressing gratitude for being "blessed" to live in the right area to be considered. He added: "I was born in the right age, even the right decade, because only a few years ago I would have had quite a few weeks or months of feeling pretty wretched."
Buckley urged others: "I'm one of the very tiny number of people so far who have had this wonderful treatment... and I couldn't have had it if I had been discovered to have cancer late. So that old message that people keep banging on about cannot be said too often - go for the regular checks."
