RUI
1 Dec 2025
Richard shares his personal journey with prostate cancer
On 1 December, Richard George, Chair of DFTO, sat down with Odis Palmer and Apeksha Naik, DFTO and Industry Inclusion and Belonging Leads to talk about his personal experience with bowel and prostate cancer.
While Richard was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2023, he also had emergency surgery for bowel cancer eight years prior. This was discovered by accident during a checkup, after he started to feel unwell and had noticeable swelling in his stomach.
“That was a very, very different experience”, Richard recalled, “because that was something that just happened overnight… I was in a doctor's surgery, having my stomach looked at on a Monday afternoon and by Tuesday lunchtime I'd been operated on. Then I was off work for nine months, nearly a year or so, with five to six months of chemotherapy.”
In November 2023, Richard started getting pain in his lower back that started creeping down into his groin. At first, he believed he'd done something to his back, but as the pains continued, he thought it might be a good idea to get a prostate check.
“I was in my mid to late 60s and I'd never had a prostate cancer check in my life, so I thought maybe I should go do that,” he said. “I contacted my GP, but couldn't get to the GP for three weeks, so I was sent away for a blood test, a PSA test, the prostate specific agent test. Anything from nought to three is sort of acceptable. Anything over three is ‘go and see your doctor’. I got a score back: it was 23.4.”
Richard went to see his GP, who did their own testing, who said that the count was 20 on the PSA test, and he was put on the pathway to get the diagnosis confirmed. This involved an MRI scan and a biopsy.
Diagnoses and treatment plan
By January 2024, doctors confirmed that Richard had prostate cancer. He initially went to see a private doctor at Harley Street to see if he could have the cancer removed through surgery, but its location meant it wasn't operable and that the chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone treatments were the best option. Richard started chemotherapy in February 2024:
“I had six rounds of chemotherapy every three weeks. Fortunately, because of previous chemotherapy, I realised the best time to do this with them was Friday because you always feel awful for about two days afterwards. Halfway through the treatment they did my PSA again, and it was 0.8, so something was working. I carried on working, carried on with board meetings, but I wasn't doing a lot of office work. I was going for a walk every day.”
After the chemotherapy, Richard had to undergo 23 rounds of radiotherapy, and unlike chemotherapy, it had to be done every day, but as there are sometimes complications with the targeted treatment, it took longer. He explained:
“Unsurprisingly for every four or five times you go in, there's at least one failure... And if they can't get it right, you come back tomorrow because they can only stick you through the machine so many times in a day…so the 23 days of radiotherapy was about 30 days.”
Richard also tried brachytherapy, which is an internal radiation treatment involving needles inserted into the prostate and requires a catheter. However, the brachytherapy wasn’t successful, and the catheter was kept in and later malfunctioned, leading to Richard suffering from an infection and kidney damage in October 2024. Richard had another catheter put in, but that was finally removed in January 2025.
Stepping back from work, managing stress and advice for men
During this time, Richard had to take a step back from work, although he was still involved in online meetings. “It's done me a lot of good in many ways, and I'm a much better chairperson,” he said. “As a chair, there’s a temptation to be a second CEO, but if you're having to pace yourself, you have to go steadily to conserve energy levels.”
When asked what his advice is for men, he said: “My advice is get checked! Get checked as early as you can… I know 2-3 people have had treatment over the last year or two. None have had surgery or taken time off work. One has had a bit of chemo, and the other has been monitoring and taking tablets. Not all are dramatic as me, but that's because mine was late stage. Mine was severe when it came to treatment. But you don't know if you don’t find out.”
Richard also advised men to share and talk about things. Richard originally reached out to Apeksha and Odis to share his story as part of a Rail Unites for Inclusion (RUI, which Apeksha and Odis co-chair) International Men’s Day event, which you can find out more about on the RUI website. However, Apeksha and Odis felt that Richard’s story was powerful enough to have its own dedicated session.
We'd like to thank Richard for sharing his story, and hope that by doing so he encourages others.