As a prostate cancer survivor (7+ years now since completing treatment), I have to echo FF's comments. One of the things I learned from the experience is that the cancer can kill, yes, but it can also incapacitate without a whole lot of warning. Generally speaking, there aren't any symptoms of prostate cancer that the individual feels until it suddenly hits, because it has metastasized to some other organ, including possibly the brain. The thing is, there are several treatments which work very well, if it's caught soon enough. But none of those treatments work once there are metastases.
Two really good examples. I'm one of them.
Mine was caught because of a gradually elevating PSA--neither my regular doc (who is also my AME) nor my urologist could feel anything wrong with my prostate. But as FF says, usually the digital test catches it first, which is then confirmed with the PSA--but the ultimate confirmation is a relatively unpleasant taking of tiny biopsies to place under the microscope. Because mine was caught early enough, I've been cancer free for more than 7 years.
My former father-in-law is the other one. He was one of these he-man types, always healthy, who eschewed going to any doc for anything. I don't know what caused him to go to his doc; we weren't told, but it's a good guess that he, like many men in their late 50s or early 60s, was having trouble peeing due to prostate enlargement--it can be really unpleasant. But we were told that he had prostate cancer, that it was surgically removed, and that his post-surgical life was really unpleasant--had to wear Depends, couldn't have sex, etc. My guess is that it had also metastasized elsewhere, because he died 2 years later, at age 63.
Cancer knows no age limits. One of my Angel Flights was to return a couple and their little boy from Children's Hospital in Denver to their home in Hardin, MT after he had received a clean bill of health from cancer treatments--he was only 3 at the time, and his cancer had been discovered right after his 2nd birthday. The daughter of one of my acquaintances at church is now cancer free at age 6--her's was also discovered when she was 2. While I was receiving my radiation treatment, I became friends with a woman receiving radiation for breast cancer--she was only 32. One of my favorite correspondence friends died just recently at age 62--she was so upbeat throughout years of devastating treatment for cancer that had spread throughout her body, yet she always remained hopeful, a real light in anyone's life. A really good man, a former pastor at my church, fought melanoma cancer for several years before it took him at age 77, but he had ignored the symptoms (some odd moles) for too long.
Yet caught in time, most cancers can be treated, and in today's medical world, most treatments are successful. Not all, unfortunately, but the majority. Here's my video about "Catch It In Time", an organization that urges anyone with any kind of odd symptom to get it checked out--and no, the first scenes are not me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4O6L60cXrY
So get yourself poked, prodded, even if it's pretty undignified. It's well worth it.
Cary