Des Rowley has lived his life in a truck, and he's not wanting to stop yet.
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The 69-year-old Queanbeyan resident got his truck driving licence at 21 and has been driving semi-trailers full-time since age 27, in the mid-1970s.
But a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2007 threatened to end the happy times in his blue Kenworth, where he often delivers for quarries.
"I went to my GP saying I'm having trouble with the waterworks, and he said, 'It could be prostate or diabetes, we'll check it up'."
The doctor found a swollen prostate and ordered some urgent tests. Cancer was found. The plan was for a removal, but surgery had to be aborted due to scar tissue from an injury when Mr Rowley was in his teens.
"They explained me the situation, and what brackytherapy was – it's stainless steel capsules, the size of a rice grain, and they're filled with slow release radiation, and they inject about 100 of them all in at the one time into the prostate," he said.
It worked. While he said the medical experts don't strictly "give you the all clear", the PSA or prostate-specific antigen levels in his blood lowered, and he can live a normal life with six-monthly check-ups.
For the father of two it means more time in the truck cab.
"I'm still going, I'll probably be driving till I'm 80, I hope," he said.
"You become addicted to it, the atmosphere of it, the mateship of the fellas you work with, there's a lot of times you think, 'I don't think I can do this job', it's a big challenge at times."
His message to other men over 50 is to get yourself checked.
"It could be laying there dormant and could do trouble," he said.
"If that cancer comes out of the prostate, it goes straight into the rest of the body and you're gone."
More than 20,000 Australian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, making it the most commonly diagnosed, and 3000 die from it.
There were 118 ACT men who died from the cancer, solely or with other issues, in Canberra hospitals across the last five years.
September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and trucks parts supplier PACCAR Parts has teamed up with former AFL player and lamb ambassador Sam Kekovich to encourage men, particularly in sedentary jobs such as truckies, to have a prostate check-up.
PACCAR will seek to raise $50,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia through in-store donations and a portion of product sales, with money to be used for community education activities, cancer research and sufferer support services.