Toilet trips were a symptom of cancer – don’t dismiss them like I did

A father-of-two has warned men not to dismiss suddenly needing repeated trips to the toilet at night – after it turned out to be the only early sign of his incurable prostate cancer.

Andy Gissing, 62, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, is now trying to fund privately a ‘last hope’ treatment – and that without it he will be facing end-of-life care.

In January 2020, Andy went to see his GP after noticing a subtle but unfamiliar change. ‘The previous few months I’d been getting up in the night to go to the loo a couple of times,’ he said.

‘I hadn’t struggled with having to get up to go for a wee in the night before but I thought it wasn’t normal.

‘I didn’t think there was anything urgent. I thought maybe I just had a urinary infection or something like that.

‘I was getting up once or twice in the night, nothing outrageous. I hadn’t been struggling with anything else at all or been feeling unwell.’

A prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test – which measures levels of a protein produced by the prostate – revealed something far more serious. His PSA levels were almost 200 per cent higher than normal.

He was referred for a biopsy and, in March 2020, received the devastating diagnosis of stage-four prostate cancer. ‘I had a biopsy on my prostate at which point they discovered I had advanced metastatic prostate cancer,’ he said.

‘It had spread to my lymph nodes, my lungs, and to my bones.’

The news came as a shock, he says: ‘I was probably fitter than I’d been before. I used to do spin classes and I was very, very active.’

Andy underwent seven rounds of chemotherapy in 2020, alongside radiotherapy, followed by a further seven rounds in 2024. Despite the intensive treatment, the cancer has continued to progress.

‘The cancer is continuing to progress,’ he said. ‘There’s less in my soft tissue – some of my soft-tissue cancer has reduced [since 2020] – but my bone cancer continues to grow.

‘It’s still in my prostate. I’ve just started chemotherapy for a third time, I’ve had two rounds and have my third round next week. Again, that’s planned to be for ten sessions. There’s only a small chance that that will slow the growth of my cancer down.

‘Once that chemotherapy has finished, there’s nothing else the NHS can do for me.’

Andy has now set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for targeted radionuclide therapy called Lutetium-177 – a precision treatment that delivers radiation directly to cancer cells while minimising damage to healthy tissue.

‘If I don’t raise the money and I don’t get the treatment, then I’m looking at end-of-life treatment,’ he said. ‘There can’t be anything more stark than that.’

The response to the appeal has left him overwhelmed. He raised £32,000 within the first three days. ‘Every penny of it will be used on Lutetium-177, which is a private treatment,’ he said. ‘That’s my last hope.

‘The response has made me feel very emotional, humbled, and loved.’

Andy is now urging other men not to ignore possible symptoms and to seek medical advice early. ‘There is no question in my mind that people should go and get checked,’ he said.

‘The horrors of what I have been going through and fighting for six years pale into total insignificance when people think it might be a little bit embarrassing to go and get a prostate check.

‘The hardest thing is watching my family go through it. I would say to anyone that questions whether or not they should be checked, they should be looking at their family and thinking about the impact on them.

‘It is unbearably difficult. I can’t even begin to quantify the sadness.’

Prostate cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the UK, with more than 60,000 cases each year and around 12,000 deaths annually. 

Risk rises sharply after the age of 50, and the disease is particularly difficult to detect early because tumours often grow on the outer part of the prostate, meaning symptoms may not appear until it has spread.

When symptoms do occur, they are often linked to urination – including difficulty starting to pee, a weak flow, needing to urinate frequently at night, or feeling unable to fully empty the bladder. 

Erectile dysfunction, blood in the urine, persistent lower back pain and unexplained weight loss can also be warning signs.

Andy’s case comes amid growing calls for targeted prostate cancer screening, particularly for high-risk men, with researchers warning that late diagnosis remains one of the biggest drivers of poor outcomes.