Tag: Recovery

It’s never simple, is it?

9th June 2020, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, Surrey I have a massive burn on my cock I thought I’d gotten away with it, but that was a mistake. After 22 radiotherapy treatments, I had a pretty dramatic change in genital ethnicity, but thankfully everything was still intact.  Then, boom. A patch of skin started to […]

Pure scanxiety.

8th August 2020, St Anthony’s Hospital, Surrey, England. More good news Despite there being no evidence of disease now, or in remission as it’s sometimes known…  I’m in “high risk surveillance”, so I get chest, abdomen and pelvis CT scans every 3 months for 3 years. Then scans twice a year for two years. I’ve […]

Under surveillance.

22nd October 2020, St Anthony’s Hospital, Surrey, England.​ How has all this happened in less than 12 months? I met the professor 11 months ago, when he confirmed that I had penile cancer. I’ve actually been “cancer free” since the beginning of the year, and I’m now on surveillance. *That’s cancer free in the sense […]

9 months cancer free.

Home, 24th October 2020. I’m not sure I’ll ever really believe it It’s been almost a year since I started my penile cancer treatment, and 9 months since new disease was discovered. After taking out the sentinel nodes in my left groin, two or three cells were positive. Other than that, I’ve been cancer free. […]

Momentum.

5th November 2020, Home. When things move, they move quickly I think it was about ten days ago, maybe two weeks since I last wrote. Back then, I knew the tide was really turning on my recovery. I could just feel it. I still had swelling in my bollocks and my penis in the mornings, […]

Things I have learnt

In these pages, I share everything I have learnt about penile cancer in the past year. Living with cancer changes everything. The effects of surgery, treatment and the changes that your body is going to have to cope with are tough to take sometimes. You laugh, you cry and some days you’re so frustrated that […]

Redivac drain bottles.

Your juices in a bag. Ok, bottle. After groin surgery, you get a surgical drain bottle or Redivac, to lug around with you for a few weeks. This is a bit of a culture shock. I was given a pint sized bottle on a long piece of pipe. This is embedded deep inside you, and […]

Hair, teeth and nails.

My groin is smooth and shiny. Radiotherapy made my whole groin area completely bald. There was not a pubic hair to be found, and it kept me hair free for what seemed like an eternity!  So just how long does it take for your hair to grow back after radiotherapy Well…  it’s not that I’ve […]

Inflammation, food, diet & exercise.

Inflammation and lymphedema (or we could just call it swelling) Surgery, radiotherapy and even chemo disrupt the way that your body works. Things just get inflamed sometimes. When you have had extensive surgery on your genitals, this is more than a bit of a problem. It’s the absolute last place you ever want to be […]

Lymphedema, the journal.

Swelling in the legs (and genitals) after groin surgery and cancer treatment is a big deal. Whilst I’ve had my fair share of swollen bollocks, I’ve been quite lucky with my legs. I have already written about general inflammation and swelling, but this is a bit different. I want to talk about compression, and how […]