Fatigue support

What is fatigue support?

Fatigue is very common in men with prostate cancer. Around three in four men with prostate cancer (74 per cent) will have fatigue at some point.

There are things you can do to help manage your fatigue and there’s a lot of support available.

How do I know if I have fatigue?

  • Feel tired despite getting plenty of sleep?
  • Lacking energy?
  • Can’t enjoy your hobbies because you’re tired?
  • Struggling to cope with returning to work?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then we want to help you with our Specialist Nurse Fatigue support.

Read more about what causes fatigue and what can help.

Speaking to someone about my fatigue made me more aware of it and so I was able to work against it in a more effective way. Being told it was possible to change things also helped. It was good to have fatigue recognised as a problem that can be changed.

How can we help

Our Specialist Nurses are here to support you. They can talk to you in depth about your experience of fatigue and the impact it is having on day-to-day life and discuss ways to better manage your tiredness.
It might not be possible to resolve the fatigue completely but there are many things that can help it to have less impact on your life.

Positive changes we might discuss include planning and prioritising your activities better to make the most of your energy levels. Balancing activity and rest and pacing yourself to achieve the things you want to do. We might also discuss ways to gradually increasing exercise or increasing enjoyable social activities and getting back into hobbies.

How to get in touch

You can call our Specialist Nurses on 0800 074 8383 from 9am-5pm Monday-Friday to discuss your fatigue.

Further help

Keeping a diary can help you plan your activities. Download our fatigue diary.

Find out more about Fatigue

You can also visit our How to manage fatigue guide 

Sexual support service

If you are experiencing fatigue as a side effect of your treatment then you may be experiencing other side effects. Our Specialist Nurses provide a sexual support service which you can find out more about here.

Confidentiality

The Fatigue support is confidential between you and Prostate Cancer UK. If you contact the Specialist Nurses, you may choose to provide personal information which will only be used for the purposes of delivering this support.

Any personal information provided will not be passed on to anyone else without your express permission, except in exceptional circumstances to comply with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) code of professional conduct or the law. Examples of this might include children contacting the service reporting abuse, anyone reporting serious self-harm, anyone expressing the intention of harming someone else, or if a terrorist threat is reported.

Your personal information and brief details of Fatigue support call content are stored on our secure database to allow continuity of service. This part of the database is managed separately from the rest of the charity.

Call monitoring

Please note Fatigue support calls are recorded for quality and training purposes. Call recordings are stored in line with our retention policy and destroyed securely on a rolling basis.