Fighting back against cancer

Mike Soper refuses to buckle to cancer

By Thrasy Petropoulos

Last December Mike Soper was given as little as a handful of months to live. Now he wants to run English cricket.

Like Rudy Giuliani, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Norman Schwarzkopf, Rupert Murdoch and more than 22,000 British men each year, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Worse followed when scans revealed that the cancer had spread to his bones. First it was the rib cage, then the pelvic girdle.

For six years the disease that many believe will soon surpass lung cancer as the most common form of cancer had gone unnoticed.

When Soper, the 55-year-old chairman of Surrey County Cricket Club, went to his GP with chest pains he was told that he most probably had heart trouble.

After all, he had none of the usual symptoms associated with prostate cancer: difficulty, pain or bleeding when urinating, needing to urinate more often than usual, or pain in his back and hips.

Thankfully, his doctor was thorough enough to insist on carrying out blood tests to measure his PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) level.

A reading of eight or nine would indicate suspected cancer, and 20 or 30 would suggest that it had spread to other parts of the body. Soper's was 500.

Spreading disease

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani also has prostate cancer

"It meant nothing to me," he recalled. "In fact I was within months of dying."

After the bone scan revealed the extent to which the disease had spread, Soper was asked to return to his GP.

"I'm not going to beat about the bush," he was told. "You've got prostate cancer and it's very serious. In my experience you have between six months and three years."

"You just can't imagine what it's like when somebody tells you that," Soper said. "The doctor couldn't take it, he was so embarrassed. And my wife just sat there as if someone had hit me."

Given the seriousness of his condition, the Zoladex (Goserelin) and Casodex (Bicalutamide) he was prescribed would be effective, but only for so long.

By limiting himself to such treatment, Soper felt, he would sooner rather than later add to the statistics of a disease that already claims 700 victims a month in the UK.

Prime ministerial help

By now desperate, he opened his address book and turned to a name that he felt most likely to be able to help - former Prime Minister John Major, the president of the Surrey club.

It felt like I had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson

Mike Soper

Soper said: "We got back to London on Christmas Day and there was a message on our answer machine from John, saying: 'Phone me any time, day or night. I've got some news for you.'

"So I phoned him and was told: 'I've been in touch with my old mate George Bush Snr who is chairman of the fundraising committee of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He is going to put a word in for you.'"

Shortly after New Year, Soper travelled to America where he was told that he had an 85% chance of maintaining his current quality of life for another five years if he did as he was told.

He now swims half a mile a day and has announced his intention to stand against Lord MacLaurin, the current chairman of the England Cricket Board, this autumn.

"You would not believe the size of this place," Soper said. "There was a cancer centre, heart centre and a diet centre that seemed to be as big as the Oval cricket ground.

"It makes us look pathetic in this country. Cancer is a dirty word here, particularly men's cancer."

Tough treatment

Drugs have formed a major part of his treatment, including a course of chemotherapy.

I haven't given up yet

Mike Soper

"I can't tell you how debilitating it was; it felt like I had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson."

But the doctors in America also insisted that Soper follow a strict diet.

Instances of prostate cancer are vastly lower in certain Asian countries than in Europe and America (Japan has 3.5 deaths per 100,000 population whereas the US, France and Switzerland have between 15.7 and 22).

It has also been shown that there is a four to fivefold increase of prostate cancer in Oriental men who have migrated to America and followed a western diet.

Though other environmental factors cannot be ruled out, food - particularly fatty foods such as red meat and dairy products - is believed by many to play a role in the development of the disease.

There is even an argument that soy protein, found extensively in eastern food, actively inhibits prostate cancer cell growth.

Additionally, some have pointed a finger at the growth hormones increasingly given to cattle.

"I was a vast meat eater," Soper said. "I now have no red meat, no dairy products. I have soy milk, soy bread, tomatoes, fish, chicken and lots of green vegetables.

"My PSA is now down to 0.3 which has to be partly due to my new diet.

"When the drugs start to fail, which they will, the fact that I've stayed with this diet will help. If it took six years for my PSA to go from 0 to 500, I'm hoping that with the diet it will take another six to rise to a similar level.

"I might be wrong. But I haven't given up yet."