Experiencing Prostate Cancer: the Fickle Finger of Fate

Publisher Marketing: In June 2013, Niall Allsop was diagnosed with prostate cancer and, like many others, survived the experience. He didn't battle against it, fight it, beat it or any of the other cliches that some people love to use ... he just had prostate cancer, was treated for it and got better. Though, as you might guess, it wasn't quite as simple as that. For a start, though the range of treatment options open to him were just the same as those available in the United States or the UK, Niall's experience was a little different in that it all took place in southern of Italy and Rome. That said, the story is universal-prostate issues and treatments are the same in any language. The sundried tomatoes on the cover-which do bear an uncanny resemblance to some images of the prostate gland-are not part of any Italian theme but rather are an example of one of the foodstuffs that, according to which internet site you browse, will either prevent, alleviate of cause prostate cancer. In Experiencing Prostate Cancer, Niall explains how he found the internet to be a minefield of conflicting information, speculation and misrepresentation-most of it meant well, much of it based at best on anecdotal evidence and some of it no more than a sales pitch. Experiencing Prostate Cancer is the antidote to much of that but then Niall was fortunate in being able to rely on his trusty 'Bullshit Button' to separate the wheat from the chaff. Experiencing Prostate Cancer does not claim to be a blueprint. It is no more than an irreverent account of Niall's experience ... from his below-the-belt medical history to the mistakes he made when first faced with a high PSA score ... from the treatment he eventually had at the hands of a remarkable doctor to trying to keep a catheter bag from slipping down his leg. Contributor Bio:  Allsop, Niall Niall Allsop was born and educated in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but began his working life as a primary school teacher in London and in 1971 took up his first headship. He left teaching in 1981 to pursue a career as a freelance photo-journalist specialising in the UK's inland waterways and wrote extensively in this field both as a contributor to several national magazines and later as author of a number of related titles, one of which, in a fourth edition, remains in print. By the early '90s he was a graphic designer and the in-house designer for a photographic publishing house in Manchester before becoming a freelance graphic designer based in the south-west of England. In September 2008 - the point at which 'Scratching the toe of Italy' begins - he and his wife, Kay, moved to Calabria, the toe of Italy, where they enjoy a sort of retirement and where they continue to struggle daily with the language in a small hilltop town where they are the only English-speaking people. Niall Allsop is also the author of 'Stumbling through Italy: Tales of Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia, Apulia, Calabria and places in-between' and 'Keeping up with the Lawrences: Sicily, Sea and Sardinia revisited'