I was diagnosed with cancer at 26. Men like me and David Cameron don’t expect things like that to go wrong

The news about David Cameron’s prostate cancer hit me with a thud of recognition: the hesitation, the domestic nudge, the reluctant appointment, the quietly mounting dread. His wife told him to get checked. And luckily for him, he listened.

Because for men, the gap between “I’m sure it’s nothing” and “Christ, how long has this been going on?” can be lethal.

I know this too well. Four years ago, aged 26, I found a lump in my testicle.

That sickening, animal jolt of panic – the overwritten cliche of the world falling out from under your feet – is something I’ll never forget. Within a week, I was on a table at the Royal Marsden while a consultant flicked through my scans and my balls.

“It doesn’t look good, Jack,” he said, matter-of-factly. He pointed to the screen like a Match of the Day pundit analysing a defensive lapse. “In my opinion, it’s cancer. The next step is to operate.”

“When?” I croaked.

“As soon as possible.”

He softened. “You’ve done well to catch it early. Some young men ignore it for ages. You wouldn’t believe how bad it gets.” He held out his hands, cupping them for effect. “Testicles the size of oranges.”

What saved me wasn’t bravery or stoicism. It was anxiety, fear, obsessiveness. My inability to let something lie. I didn’t wait. I didn’t shrug. I didn’t tell myself it was probably fine, that it would go away; that I was too young, too healthy, too busy. I pushed, I googled, I booked private scans, I made a nuisance of myself. And it saved my life.

But a lot of men, especially young ones, don’t behave like that. We grow up with the idea that health belongs to women: breast cancer pink ribbons, screenings, smear tests, a whole cultural apparatus that encourages vigilance and conversation. Cancer, oddly, is a feminised disease in the public imagination: communal, emotional, something people rally around. Male cancers, by contrast, live at the margins. Testicular cancer hits the young; prostate cancer hits the old. In between is a long silence.

When I was diagnosed, there was no script for what a 26-year-old man with cancer is meant to say or do. There were no peers to compare notes with. I was too old for the tragic-child narrative and too young for the “brave battle” cliches of later life. Men my age don’t expect anything to go wrong. We don’t talk about our bodies. We pretend we’re fine, even as something inside us is screaming.

Men often treat illness like a personal failing. We would rather limp for six months than book a physio, would rather google symptoms at 2am than speak to an actual doctor. Half the men in Britain would sooner show you their internet search history than their medical one. And when the illness in question involves anything south of the waist, that reluctance quadruples.

And the data reflects this: men present later, are diagnosed later, and die unnecessarily because they didn’t act when they first felt that flicker of worry. It’s not because we’re stupid or vain, but because they were never taught to treat their own bodies as something worth paying attention to.

This is why Cameron’s story matters more than the predictable culture-war bickering you’ll find underneath any article about him. Whatever you think of his politics, here is a man saying plainly: I got checked, it probably saved me, and you should do the same. That voice cuts through the fog of embarrassment far more effectively than any government leaflet.

We need more of it. More men speaking plainly. More partners nudging. More GPs insisting. And eventually, a screening programme that treats male cancers with the same seriousness and structure that we’ve long offered women. Early detection is not complicated; it’s just chronically under-normalised.

I caught my cancer early because fear overrode all my masculine instincts. Cameron caught his because his wife asked him to. Neither method is ideal. But until we build a culture where men check, ask, prod, book, and investigate without being pushed, these uncomfortable, vulnerable admissions from public figures genuinely save lives.

If the former prime minister is willing to say, “I went, and you should too,” then maybe the rest of us might finally start listening.