Ex-Met Police dog handler's life saved by robotic surgery

A retired Met police dog handler known as Lucky believes he has lived up to his name after undergoing robotic surgery to remove a life-threatening cancer.

Dave “Lucky” Edwards, 55, received the hi-tech operation at the Royal Marsden hospital in Chelsea less than two months after the tumour was detected in his prostate.

The father of two said he wanted to live to see his children, Andrew, 24, and Kate, 27, marry and have their own children.

He hopes his story will encourage other men, including former Met colleagues, to get tested. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with 47,000 diagnoses a year in the UK. It kills 11,000 a year.

Mr Edwards earned his nickname when he and wife Claire had their wedding reception at The Grand hotel in Brighton, one month before the IRA bomb in 1984. “We had the room where the bomb was planted to get changed in,” he said.

He also won a £28,500 football bet on a £1 accumulator — and was badly assaulted and had a shotgun held to his head during his 32 years on frontline duty.

“With this, I believe I have become Lucky again,” said Mr Edwards, who retired in 2012.

“The doctor said, ‘Go out and buy yourself 100 lottery tickets. You are the only person I am giving good news to today.’”

The non-smoker, who lives near Leatherhead, Surrey, and his consultant surgeon Declan Cahill invited the Standard to watch the two-hour operation to mark a decade of use of the da Vinci robots at the Marsden.

Mr Edwards said the cancer was discovered “through luck”.

“I had a fantastic GP who was very good at diagnosing my problem. I got up of a night and really tried to pee, but it just wasn’t flowing very well,” he explained.

He was referred to his local hospital, Epsom, where the cancer was detected through tests. He was then referred on to the Marsden, one of the UK’s specialist cancer hospitals.

Doctors told him that he would make a full recovery without the need for radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

Mr Cahill, the UK’s most prolific robotic surgeon in urology, performs about 160 radical prostatectomies — the removal of the entire prostate gland — using the robot a year.

The latest version of the machine was donated to the Marsden two years ago by former House of Fraser chairman Don McCarthy in memory of his wife, Diane.

Mr Cahill said: “The cancer was life-threatening and this operation was curative. He should make a good recovery and I anticipate a complete cure from his prostate cancer.”

He said the robot enabled him to operate on more patients, with fewer complications.