17th February 2020, St Anthony’s Hospital, Surrey, England Another day, another hospital, another test… It was great to speak to the professor this morning, and he gave me the good news. The lymph nodes removed from my left groin a week ago were all negative! If any of the 11 nodes we removed showed signs […]
Tag: Surveillance
Thank fuck that’s over.
2nd June 2020, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, Surrey Is it the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning? My chemo is complete, and I have 5 radiotherapy sessions left in the “adjuvant therapy” phase. I’ve had enough of the 160 mile round trips every day, and I’m glad they’re almost over. After […]
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. […]
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 […]
Needles, anaesthetics, cannulas, catheters and urine retention.
Anesthetics The people that knock you out are masters of the dark arts. Plus, they’re a huge part of keeping you safe when you’re under the knife. Always the most charming clinicians, quick with a joke to put you at ease. It always seems to me that anesthetists, more than anything else, just love giving […]
Scans.
Get used to it. Cancer treatment means lots of scans, it’s just a fact of life. I usually get a CT scan every 6 to 9 weeks, but different doctors have different needs. In the course of treatment, I had ultrasounds, radiotherapy planning scans and even, because I was really lucky? I had some nuclear […]
Stress, rest and sleep.
Stress. Cancer is often stressful, and more than anything I think it’s just fear of the unknown. It plays on the mind, I know it’s not just me. Sometimes I feel completely fine too, like all this is happening to someone else. Believe me when I say this, that a whole family suffers with cancer, […]
7 minutes.
26th November 2020, St George’s Hospital, London, England. I’m a glutton for punishment. What a day today has been. I checked out from The Lister at lunchtime with a month’s worth of drugs, and a clean bill of health. The ward sister worked some magic behind the scenes, and I didn’t get ripped off at […]