Alan Morton endures prostate cancer | androgen deprivation therapy | decapeptyl | darolutamide
- Jun 30
- 12 min read
DESCRIPTION
Alan Morton experienced symptoms associated with prostate cancer, but it was some time before he sought medical attention. Dating back to his teens, he had had a subpar urine flow, but in his sixties, he began to see blood in his urine. He thought it might be a urinary tract infection, but when nothing had changed six months later, he contacted his doctor. After various scans, a digital rectal exam and a biopsy, Alan was told he had Stage 3B prostate cancer. It was later determined the cancer had metastasized to his pelvic and was re-diagnosed as Stage 4 Incurable. He was placed on a hormone regimen including the injection of a drug called decapeptyl. Alan said the side effects were awful, including fatigue, loss of muscle mass, weight gain and a severe loss of testosterone. He suspects he will be on the hormone regimen for the rest of his life, but Alan Morton calls himself a prostate cancer endurant. He still engages in hiking, and despite the handicaps, seeks to live life to the fullest.
It was in 2023 when Alan began to pass blood in his urine. He didn’t think this development was worth sharing with his wife or his doctor. However, his wife saw what she thought was dark urine when Alan went to the bathroom and forgot to flush. He told her he was passing blood and she immediately made a doctor’s appointment for him.
Alan submitted to a digital rectal exam and provided a urine sample. Although he thought the sample was “crystal clear,” the doctor said the sample included “microscopic blood.” He was called in for another appointment, provided another blood sample. From that and a biopsy, he received a diagnosis of Stage 3B prostate cancer.
Because of neck trauma stemming from a long ago auto accident, Alan could have his prostate removed. His care team concluded the only available treatment option would be a hormone regimen, starting with androgen deprivation therapy, or ADT. He said the effect it had on his body was awful. They included fatigue, severe loss of testosterone, hair loss, plus weight gain in various places, among them, his breasts. He was subsequently prescribed the injection of a drug, decapeptyl, and a pill called bucalutamide, designed to stop the growth of the tumor.
The ADT regimen stopped in October 2024, but the following month he began to pass blood again. To make matters worse, his PSA, once at 0.037, rose sharply to 6.39 in April 2026. Alan underwent a bone scan that indicated his cancer had spread to his pelvis. He is back on ADT and expects he will be for the rest of his life.
Alan says his urinary function is outstanding but would rate his sexual function at something like 20 to 30 percent of what it was pre-diagnosis.
Alan Morton does not call himself a survivor of cancer, but rather an endurant. He knows given his diagnosis and his hormone regimen, he is at reduced capacity, but aspires to live a full, rich life.
Additional Resources:
Support Group:
Fans for the Cure: https://www.fansforthecure.org
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Morton: Greetings. This is the @CancerInterviews podcast, and I am your host, prostate cancer survivor Bruce Morton. On this episode, our guest endures after being diagnosed with incurable Stage IV prostate cancer, but his cancer journey endures as well. He is Alan Morton of Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom. His is a powerful story and now is the time to hear it. Alan, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Alan Morton: Hello, Bruce. Thanks for having me.
BM: First up, we want to learn more about you, so if you would, tell us about where you are from, what you have done for work and what you like to do for fun.
AM: I have always worked construction in the HVAC sector and have been doing that for the last 25 years. Prior to that, I actually worked as a musician for a while. Did some recording, some gigging. What really made a difference for me was the birth of my son, way back in 2001. I had to sit down and take stock of where I was going in life and where I was about to go. A family firm had been involved in construction for a couple decades, so I came to them and begged for a job.
BM: The term endurant. On our podcast, we have never heard that term, and yet I suspect it applies to lots and lots of people on a cancer journey. What does it mean?
AM: People occasionally ask me how I cope, living with prostate cancer. I think to say that I ‘cope’ is inaccurate. I honestly never let cancer play on my mind. I know it’s there. I know I have to attend appointments in hospital, a drug regimen I must stick to, but I never let it get in the way of my life. I am in the office at 6:00 in the morning and leave at 4:00 in the afternoon. I still engage in climbing and hill walking and stuff like that. I just like to stay as normal as possible. So, when I say I am enduring cancer is much more accurate.
BM: For all of us on a cancer journey, there was that point in time when our health turned from normal to abnormal. For you, when was that and how did it manifest itself?
AM: This may sound a bit crude, but I have always had a poor urine stream ever since I was a teenager. If we look at when I first took note of any symptoms, there was blood in my urine, but I still didn’t notice anything sinister. Then about 2023, I was passing blood a lot more regularly and that led me to sit up and take notice even though I did not divulge anything to my wife or any doctor. I acknowledge the blood but kept ignoring it, a typical bloke thing to do is to think it will go away, a UTI, perhaps. But it was still there, so I was thinking this was a rather prolonged UTI. Then, one morning I was in the shower, I noticed a discharge of seminal fluid, and it was brick red. Suddenly I realized that was not normal, that rang an alarm but I still didn’t do anything about it, but I did withdraw from my wife a little bit. Then one morning after urinating, my dog came in, nudged my leg for a biscuit. I got him a biscuit and in doing so, I forgot to flush. Well, my wife came into the bathroom, saw the blood, texted me to say I should have flushed and went on to say that my urine was really dark. She suggested I hydrate more during the day. At that point, I texted back and said it was blood that made the urine dark. That’s when she rang me, sounded very upset and made an appointment with my GP. I visited her that afternoon. She took some urine samples and did a digital rectal exam, then asked for another urine sample. This one appeared crystal clear, so I was pretty confident and put it down on her desk, full of confidence, full of arrogance, I guess. However, she applied this solution to the sample and said it was full of microscopic blood. Because I couldn’t see the blood with the naked eye, I actually argued with her, but she said there was a positive reaction, there was blood. Then the language she started to use was a bit more alarming, and that she needed to run an emergency scan that afternoon. I told her I had to go to work, stupid to the end. She insisted it needed to be done in the next 48 hours. This was on a Tuesday, so I said I could come in on Thursday evening. The following morning, my telephone rang and it was the urology department at my hospital. They said I needed to come in that afternoon for another scan because they thought they had found something pretty serious. My diagnosis was Stage 3B, which meant it had broken out beyond the prostate capsule, which is how the blood ended up in my seminal fluid. They opted not to offer me an operation and said they would try to control the cancer with hormones and drugs every six months, going forward. So that’s how I eneded up in this mess.
BM: By the way, we hope you can find time to like and subscribe to our channel, and if you hit the bell icon, you will be notified any time we post an interview. We also want to remind you that on Cancer Interviews we are not distributors of medical advice. If you seek medical advice, please contact a licensed healthcare professional.
So, Alan, we now this diagnosis was horrific, life-altering news, but just as each person is different, each reaction to the diagnosis is different. How did you handle this news?
AM: I didn’t handle it very well. I went to meet the urologist after the diagnosis and my wife came with me. She had lost both parents to cancer within the previous five years and here I was, putting us through this again because I had chosen to ignore the symptoms when they first materialized. My wife was visibly upset. The urologist I suspect was extremely tired. He seemed to be a little nonchalant to me. He told me I was Stage 3B. I told him I wasn’t.
BM: That said, Alan, each type of cancer is different. Some afford the patient multiple treatment options while others do not. You went with the hormone treatment. Did you have any other options?
AM: I was angry with myself, and I directed that anger at the doctor. I then asked him if I could get my prostate removed. I would have been quite happy with the operation. He said no because I had had neck trauma in the past because of car crashes in your past, meaning there is a possibility of post-operative stroke on the operating table, so we are going to rule out a prostatectomy, that is not in the cards. He said he would be conducted a multi-disciplinary team meeting, an MDT the following Tuesday after which we will inform you of our plan of action. I received a letter about a week after that meeting, stating I would be undergoing androgen deprivation therapy, or ADT, which is hormone treatment. I had no choice in what they were proposing.
BM: The hormone treatment. Looking back, what was the toughest part of it?
AM: The emasculation. It takes away everything you think of as being a guy. I lost strength, body hair on my arms and chest, but thankfully, not my head. My legs became bald. I had no energy whatsoever, had hot flashes, lost muscle mass and gained weight in places I didn’t think I could gain weight, like tops of arms and breasts. Then there’s the testicular atrophy thing going on because what the hormone injections do is they tell your pituitary glands, your tesicles to stop producing testosterone. When that happens, there is very little use for them, so they tend to shrink in size. I mean, they don’t disappear, but they shrink by about one-third, I’d say.
BM: Now, I cannot ask you about inching toward survivorship because that is not part of the vocabulary of your journey, but Alan, could you talk about progress that was made along the way?
AM: Yes, so about a week after I received that letter from the hospital, I returned and they gave me an injection of a drug called decapeptyl, they gave me 22.5 mg of that. These were going to be every six months for a period of two years. They gave me one shot that day, then they prescribed a one-month course of pills called bicalutamide, which is there to stop tumor flare because when you start hormone treatment, it actually spurs the cancer on a little bit because testosterone levels rise initially and you have to crush that and bring it back under control until the hormone drug has a chance of taking over and doing its job. So, that went on for two years. I was on ADT until October 2024. I had my last shot then and it would be in my system for six months after that, through April 2025. In November 2024 I began to pass blood again. I was obviously quite concerned about this. That turned out to be post-radiotherapy damage, as I had had 21 sessions of radiotherapy. That started about three months after decapeptyl shot. I really think that my cancer was progressing. I wasn’t very happy about it at all. They sent me out to have a cystoscopy. The results came back and revealed that the blood vessels in my prostate glands, which are very vascular glands, were renewing. The walls of those vessels are quite thin, so they could burst quite easily, pretty much that is all it was, so that calmed me down quite a bit. In April 2025, I started passing blood again. I went to see the GP. Then time I was sent for cystoscopy and a colonoscopy to make sure there was no spread. They came back clear. I had a PSA test taken then which showed me level was 0.037 and holding well. Everything looked good, really good. Then in early October 2025, I pursued another PSA test, and had it set in November. Lo and behold, my PSA had escalated to 1.136. The urologist said I was still okay, but he would wait until mine rose above 2.5 before taking any action. I went for another test in January 2026. They took four blood samples. They were looking for kidney function, liver function, stuff like that. What I didn’t realize was, they took another PSA test. They said I was at 1.999. I said I was at 2.1. I said the difference between the two is neither here nor there. I told them they should be looking at the 2.1 figure and how it trending upward from 1.136, which they didn’t do. They said the next test is due March 11, 2026, and repeated they were watching for me to go above 2.5, at which time they will take action. I said by March I would probably be above 4.0, but when I went in March, I came back at 3.36. They sent me for a CT scan and a bone scan. The bone scna came back that I had prostate cancer in my pelvis and I learned I was Stage IV incurable and that any treatment going forward would no longer be considered curative. That day, yet another PSA test was taken, and I came back at 6.39, so the actual acceleration in that curve was really eyebrow-raising. I would tell any guy listening to this that if they are having regular PSA tests to keep a very close eye on the velocity. That is key to what is going on down below.
BM: Alan, I want to ask now that the acuity of your diagnosis has risen to incurable, we had at the beginning, talked about the operative word, ‘endurant.’ You had talked about the term a bit and defined it, but these days, what does the terms endurant look like?
AM: I have started another round of ADT, including decapeptyl and darolutamide. That is 1200mg per day, four pills, 300mg each. I am likely to be on that for life or I will be on that until the ADT stops working because it can reach a stage which is called castrate-resistant. If that happens, we will have to look at a different avenue to keep me alive. It’s pretty grim.
BM: Alan, we are going to wrap up now, but we want to ask you a question about the two areas most affected by prostate cancer. The first one is urinary function. If pre-diagnosis, you were at 100 percent, these days how close are you to 100 percent?
AM: Having the ability to pee, I am probably at about 95 percent. I had mentioned at the very beginning I have never had a very good stream, even growing up as a teenager and by 20s and 30s, it was never a great stream. I actually pee much better now. I am quite happy with what I can deliver.
BM: Guessing on what we have heard, you might have a different number for sexual function. How close are you to 100 percent where that is concerned?
AM: Sexual function, luckily I still have desire. It is the actual functioning of the equipment which is questionable. So, if you are asking me, it is roughly 20 or 30 percent. Understood, and those are number s that afflict many men diagnosed with prostate cancer.
BM: Alan, in conclusion, we really appreciate your story. It is one that will be informative to anybody who is on a prostate cancer journey or is that stage in which they have learned they might be diagnosed with prostate cancer. Thanks very much for being with us on Cancer Interviews.
AM: Okay, Bruce, it was a pleasure. I hope I have helped some guys understand what they need to be doing. Just go and see your doctor and get that PSA test. It is so important.
BM: Exactly, and as we say whenever we wrap up that if you or a loved one are on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are individuals like Alan Morton, who have sage advice that can ease the cancer journey. So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.
Additional Resources:
Support Group:
Fans for the Cure: https://www.fansforthecure.org
SHOW NOTES
Alan Morton Rough Draft
Alan Morton experienced symptoms associated with prostate cancer, but it was some time before he sought medical attention. Dating back to his teens, he had had a subpar urine flow, but in his sixties we began to see blood in his urine. He thought it might be a urinary tract infection, but when nothing had changed six months later, he contacted his doctor. After various scans, a digital rectal exam and a biopsy, Alan was told he had Stage 3B prostate cancer. It was later determined the cancer had metastasized to his pelvic and was re-diagnosed as Stage 4 Incurable. He was placed on a hormone regimen including the injection of a drug called decapeptyl. Alan said the side effects were awful, including fatigue, loss of muscle mass, weight gain and a severe loss of testosterone. He suspects he will be on the hormone regimen for the rest of his life, but Alan Morton calls himself a prostate cancer endurant. He still engages in hiking, and despite the handicaps, seeks to live life to the fullest.
Additional Resources
Support Group:
Fans for the Cure: https://www.fansforthecure.org
Time Stamps:
04:17 Alan explains when he first noticed symptoms associated with prostate cancer.
10:52 Describes his initial diagnosis of Stage 3B prostate cancer.
12:33 Reaction to his diagnosis.
16:08 Recalls the toughest part of his hormone treatment.
17:53 Alan is asked if progress was being made thanks to his hormone treatment.
19:12 He thought cancer was in his past, but he began to again have blood in his urine.
25:19 Was told his cancer had been revised to Stage 4 Incurable.
27:57 Says his urinary function is excellent.
28:46 Is asked about his sexual function.
KEYWORDS (tags):
prostate cancer
darolutamide
bicalutamide
androgen deprivation therapy
decapeptyl
digital rectal exam
cystoscopy
testicular atrophy
urinary tract infection
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