During an annual blood check, the PSA values of the then 62-year-old Fernand Fonteyne were found to be too high. The verdict? prostate cancer.
His prostate was removed fairly quickly. 33 radiation treatments and 1 year of hormone treatment in the form of injections followed. Not without consequences, of course. “Your libido decreases enormously as a result of this” testifies Fonteyne in ‘The World of Sofie’. And because of the hormone treatment he was also very tired, and he lost a lot of his muscle strength. “It completely pulls your body down.”
Fonteyne received a lot of support from his wife, but that is not obvious for all men. As chairman of Think Blue Flanders, he has already spoken to many fellow sufferers, and he knows all too well that marriages are also on the rocks because of this cancer. It’s not for nothing that one of the brochures he distributes is called ‘you have cancer with two’.
Listen to his testimony above.
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