“It hadn’t yet gotten to the stage where it was non-reversible and so (the doctor) gave us a number of guidelines. I say us because he wanted to make sure that my wife made sure that I followed it. He sensed that I wasn’t going to be a very good patient. So he spoke to her most of the time rather than me,” he said.
The above was how 85 year old Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, disclosed the nature of treatment he received to beat prostate cancer.
Soyinka said that the treatment for him was an ‘easy ride’.
Soyinka told Charles Mgbolu of the BBC Life Clinic at his Ogun State home in an interview published on Tuesday that he was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer in 2014 when he went for a routine medical check-up.
Soyinka used an advanced technology known as proton therapy, which is said to be unavailable yet in Nigeria, to treat the disease.
He queried the reason why people go outside the country “to receive the kind of treatment which is affordable in this nation.”
According to the BBC, 13,000 cases of prostate cancer were reported in Nigeria in 2018.
Soyinka explained: “I don’t go to the gym and I do not jog. I look at people who are jogging on the streets, some of them should go and jog behind walls. They look ridiculous. But I believe that my normal active life is more than sufficient. At least if I feel sluggish, I take a walk. If I feel very, very sluggish, I take my gun and go in the bush and go hunting.”
Soyinka spoke about the cancer at a press conference at the June 12 Cultural Centre, Abeokuta, Ogun State in November 2014.
He said back then that the disease was first diagnosed in December 2013 and after a treatment procedure, which he completed on October 28, 2014, he became free of the ailment.
The poet and essayist is an advocate of cancer awareness and is on the board of the African Cancer Centre.