A FATHER with incurable prostate cancer has saved his friend’s life and is determined to save more men.

Kevin Logan, 56, from Swindon, is trying to set up a screening group for men in the county which can identify prostate cancer early through a simple blood test, so it can be treated in time and hopefully save lives.

He was misdiagnosed twice as having kidney stones when he went to the doctors with abdominal pain moving down his groin. 18 months later, in June last year, he was given the devastating diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer.

Because it had spread to his bones the dad of Georgina, Jo and Charley has been told it will be controllable for two to five years, but it is not curable. It could have been caught sooner if he had been screened.

“Your life just goes on hold and it is almost in freeze frame when you get diagnosed with any cancer,” said Mr Logan, who works as an operations manager for a recruitment company in Reading, and lives with his partner Viv.

The test measures the Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) count and indicates through a traffic light system whether a man’s score is above average and if he should seek medical advice.

By sharing his experiences Mr Logan has already saved his Swindon friend Geoff Maddison’s life as he demanded a PSA check from his doctor which identified he had signs of prostate cancer, despite showing no symptoms. Mr Maddison will be undergoing radiation therapy this month.

Mr Logan said: “He came up to me in the rugby club and he said ‘you have just saved my life.’ It was quite a touching moment really that my experiences helped one person. So by doing a screening programme how many hundreds of people can we save?”

Mr Logan, whose mum died from brain cancer aged 47 in 1989 and dad died from lung cancer aged 79 in 2014, has also been inspired by The Graham Fulford Charitable Trust.

“They have been doing screenings for about ten years,” he said. “They have done 50,000 tests and nearly 900 have come back with prostate cancer. They have proved by doing these tests early you can catch prostate cancer early and the numbers they are catching are more than twice the national average but the closest they get to Swindon is Reading - there is nothing in Wiltshire.

“But this is a cancer that can be pre-screened and something can be done about it, yet there is no national screening. There are plenty of screening programmes for women, for breast cancer and smear tests, but there are not any for men.

“With the PSA test, a high score does not necessarily mean you have cancer and a low score does not mean you haven’t. However, if you know you have a high score you can do something about it.

“Most doctors will not do a blood test unless you are showing some form of symptoms. As in my case when the symptoms started to show it was too late.”

Mr Logan is hoping to organise Saturday drop-in sessions, which involves a man filling out a basic questionnaire and a nurse taking a small blood sample to be sent off and tested. Individuals with high scores will be contacted directly by a medical practitioner.

Mr Logan added: “The Provincial Grand Master for Wiltshire, Philip Bullock, is 100 per cent behind it and he has offered the Masonic halls in Swindon, Salisbury and Trowbridge to cover north, south and central Wiltshire as ideal venues where you can come along, have a cup of tea and a very simple blood test.”

Mr Logan can be contacted on: pcscreening@btinternet.com