Penis Cancer: My Very Private Hell

By Simon Usborne, The Independent UK. Posted March 19, 2008.

'Cancer patients are often quite gung-ho," says John D Edwards at his studio in the Foundry, a converted biscuit factory in Poplar, east London, "but I could shut them up in seconds." Reliving his brush with death a decade ago, the celebrated painter tells how, in a bid to boost morale, patients on his cancer ward would gather to talk about their illnesses.

"There were awful cases -- people with eyes missing, huge growths or bits chopped off," he recalls, "but none of them seemed fazed. Then I introduced myself. They said, 'so, what have you got?' 'Oh, er, men's cancer,' I replied. 'Prostate?' 'No.' 'Testicular?' 'No.' They dug a bit more until I just came out and said it. 'I've got penile cancer, OK -- cancer of the penis!' You could have heard a pin drop."

It was one of many milestones in Edwards's long recovery from one of the rarest cancers, which the artist talks about with almost uncomfortable candour. Now all but clear of the disease that came very close to killing him, Edwards, 56, is showing some of the paintings he created throughout the ordeal in an exhibition now touring hospitals, starting at the Chelsea and Westminster in London.

Edwards has also produced a book. How Cancer Saved My Life, which includes a touching foreword by the painter's friend Sir Peter Blake, chronicles seven years of his life, starting before the diagnosis that changed everything. In the early 1990s, Edwards had returned to his beloved London flat at the Foundry, where moulds for sculptures by some of modern art's biggest names dot the corridors, after trying to "live like a rock star" in Gloucestershire. "When the postman is the most exciting person in your life you should worry," he says.

To celebrate his return to the capital, Edwards painted a series of playful visions of urban life, inspired by the cartoon annuals he loved as a child. The first painting shows a gurning bulldog in brilliant orange, its tongue hanging out. But, peering around the corner of a factory wall, the gnashing hound also appears to portend danger. "There was trouble in the neighbourhood," reads the caption.

It was in the bath that the artist discovered a lump in his groin. In a move that probably saved his life, he went straight to his GP. He was immediately referred to a consultant, who ordered a biopsy. "They told me I had a malignant tumour in my lymph nodes, that it was very serious, but that they didn't know where the cancer was coming from," Edwards says.

In a desperate hunt for the primary source of cancer, doctors at the Royal London Hospital, two miles from Edwards's studio, carried out a host of tests and biopsies. Soon, their search centred on Edward's penis. "They asked me if I had a foreskin, which I did," Edwards says. "Then they asked if I had ever had trouble pulling it back, which I had." Doctors circumcised Edwards and discovered a redness under his foreskin. This apparently innocuous rash was quickly identified as the source of his cancer.

Only 400 men a year in the UK are diagnosed with penile cancer, compared with 35,000 for prostate cancer. Placed way down the list of the most common male cancers at 23 (one place ahead of male breast cancer) it is extremely rare. It is also, says Edwards, very hard to talk about.

"I had always been quite squeamish and I was terrified at first," he says. "I told my family I had 'something' cancer. But it became so difficult not to talk about it so I just told them I had penis cancer, 'cancer of the dick!' With four sisters and a mother, you just have to say it like it is."

Reconciled to the nature of his cancer, Edwards then had to face treatment. Doctors started chemotherapy and prescribed him interferon, a stronger version of the anti-viral proteins already produced by the body. "The first day I injected it, all my nails fell off," he says. "It made me feel horrible."

Stuck in a hospital bed, it was one of the lowest periods for Edwards. When he could return to his studio, there was only one thing he could do. "I had to paint what I was experiencing -- that's what I do," he says. But there would be no more childish cartoons. Perhaps the darkest depiction of his illness appears on the cover of his book. Out of this World shows Edwards as a bird, in bed, on the moon. "That's exactly how I felt," he says, "like an alien, completely cut off from the world, looking down at the life I might or might not go back to."

By this stage, Edwards's cancer was turning the artist into something of a medical celebrity. "A visiting consultant from France came in and asked, 'you're penile cancer man -- can I have a look?' I said yes, and showed him my penis -- it feels like I've showed it to the whole world. He had a look and said, almost in passing, 'In France, we would try radiotherapy with that.'" The snatched exchange would prove crucial.

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