When Sheffield man, Denton Wilson was recovering from prostate cancer treatment, he decided to grow his hair, as a symbol of getting back to good health.
Now more than 20 years later, he has shaved off his dreadlocks to raise funds for Prostate Cancer UK. Denton couldn’t have picked a colder season, but he’s glad that he went ahead with his stunt which raised more than £750 and got coverage in Sheffield newspapers and social media.
Friends had joked that like Samson, natural bodybuilder Denton, may lose his strength when he loses his hair.
“I want to show people how sincere I am about raising money and awareness. I want to give something of myself,” he explained when we met to chat online about his fundraising.
Denton’s story is an incredible one – it has all the ingredients needed for a film or TV blockbuster.
When he was nine-years-old, he discovered that the woman he knew as his Mother, was really his grandmother. He moved from Jamaica to start a new life in England, and was reunited with his Mother who had come out years earlier as part of the Windrush generation to work as a nurse in the NHS.
As a teenager, he began to have dreams of his father, who he felt was trying to make contact, but his mother told him his father was dead.
The dreams persisted, and finally aged 42, after lots of research he made a trip to Jamaica to meet up with his father. Sadly, the long awaited reunion was tinged by sadness, as his father died shortly after Denton’s visit.
“He told me he was dying from prostate cancer. I didn’t even know what that was. He told me to find out everything I could to see if I could help him.”
Following his father’s death, Denton went to his GP and insisted he needed to be tested for prostate cancer. The GP responded he was a healthy young man with no symptoms, but Denton was adamant that he would not leave without being tested.
Following a PSA (blood test) the GP was in touch to request more tests, which revealed aggressive prostate cancer. Denton had surgery but refused chemotherapy, radiotherapy or hormone treatment.
The operation left him with a catheter which he found painful and inconvenient, confining him to home.
“I felt useless, less than a man. I had little information and no one to talk to. The subject was taboo and I suffered in silence. I just wanted to give up,” he recalls.
If it hadn’t been for Denton’s strong faith, he is not sure what would have become of him. In those early months he prayed and cried. He felt inspired to live a better life and began to exercise and eat healthily, after years of existing on fast food.
Little by little, he began to venture out again, and realised he had a message to give to other men, who like him, had no idea about this deadly and common cancer.
He trained as a Community Champion for Prostate Cancer UK and travelled the country giving talks and found that people could relate to him and his experiences.
One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime, and this figure increases to one in four black men, which makes Denton even more determined to do all he can to raise awareness.
He has found natural bodybuilding to be another way to reach more men.
“Bodybuilding is a male dominated sport and I want men to see that having cancer doesn’t stop me. If I can do it, anyone can.”
After appearing on Britain’s Got Talent, Denton went on to become the National and World Champion for natural bodybuilding in the Over Sixties Bodybuilding Championships in the USA. Natural bodybuilding is a bodybuilding movement for competitors who abstain from performance-enhancing drugs.
You can read Denton’s book ‘A man dies every 45 minutes’ which is available from Amazon.