A man from Warrington had his life unknowingly changed forever when he responded to a text message he was never supposed to see.
Kevin Wrench was a man who ‘never went to the doctor’, but is glad he did after his phone pinged in November 2023 with an automated message.
The 60-year-old initially blew it off, but he couldn’t seem to get the text out of his head.
In the end, he decided to put his mind at rest by visiting his GP.
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However, what Kevin didn’t know was that his willingness to go and get himself checked out, despite not having any symptoms, saved his life.
The Cheshire native told The Telegraph how he received the message ‘out of the blue’ from his local surgery at the Chapelford Medical Centre.
The text in question alerted him to prostate cancer risks and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests.
This is something he never should have received, as Kevin later found out his surgery was not supposed to talk to him about PSA tests. But they did, and he’s alive because of it.
“I instantly dismissed it, thinking: ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, I’ve got no symptoms’, but it played on my mind. After a day or two, I read the text again but still did nothing. A little while went by and I kept finding myself going back to the message, so I decided to book myself in for a test in late December,” said Kevin.
Prostate cancer is the only major cancer type in the UK without a proper screening programme.
Even though 12,000 men die per year of the disease, the NHS does not carry out routine checks for men who do not carry the specific gene mutation which makes them more susceptible to developing it.
Those who were more likely to get the cancer are men over 50, Black men (who may get it younger), and those with a family history of cancer, per Macmillan.
Symptoms of prostate cancer includes finding it difficult to start peeing or straining to pee, having a weak flow of urine, stop start peeing, needing to pee urgently or often, or both, feeling like you still need to pee when you've just finished, and peeing during the night.
For Kevin, when he was told he had a 'slightly raised PSA levels’ and was given an urgent referral to Warrington Hospital as they believed he could have cancer, it was a shock.
With a ‘minimally elevated’ reading, he thought the tests were all for nothing, until he received an appointment for a biopsy.
Kevin explained: “In January 2024, I was called to Runcorn Hospital for the results, so I went along with my partner, Cheryl. A specialist doctor and nurse met us, and hit me with the news: I had stage 2 prostate cancer.”
Kevin’s cancer was in more than half of his prostate but had not spread, which meant that he could be treated.
The whole thing was a shock to him, as he admitted to never considering the need for a check up until he got the text.
“I had no symptoms at all,” he said. “I never saw my doctor and prostate cancer just wasn’t on my radar. I’d never even heard of a PSA blood test before.”
Britt Jones