My husband was 48 years old when diagnosed with cancer. He apparently may have had it for 5 to 10 years undiagnoised due to him being a hard working labourer, and many of the aches were put down to work pains. off course when things started to really show themselves he still didn't say anything about it for a few months, I started to notice how uncomfortable he was when sitting down and then he couldn't walk around without holding his ribs, then came trying to lie down he kept moving around then sitting on cushions. He couldn't even have his wallet in his back pocket because of the pressure. Then he finally admitted to me that he couldn't urinate properly only tiny spurts every half an hour or so, over many weeks we were fighting over going to the Drs, but he was to scared to find out what it was, he thought it was diabetes as our daughter and his brother has diabetes. Unfortunately the news was the worse news it could have been. His urologist took three days of testing the biopsy to find
out the type of cancer. Then he said he had a very rare one called, neuro-endocrine, and it was to late for surgery or even getting psa levels as he was so far advanced there was only chemo to try to alleviate, some of his pain of course he only had three cycles of carboplatin and etoposide when the Drs said that it was no use having any more and to try radiation therapy, he had a months worth of treatment.
They gave him at the initial diagnosis around 24 months, and hopfully the treatments will give him longer and better quality of life. Sadly he only lived for 11 months, the cancer metatasised into his spine, ribs, left eye, lungs, left thigh he fought a valiant fight trying to keep up his spirit for our three children youngest only 11 years, he died in March 06.
What I wanted to say is for any symptoms that you may have please!!! get it checked out and to hear that it is nothing serious, because being macho will not make the cancer go away, and we lost the other half of our family.
regards debbie