My chemotherapy journey (6 cycles of O-CHOP) began in earnest at 6.30pm on the evening of 25th November 2019 when I received a call from the hospital to go in to prepare for treatment the following day. It may seem strange, but I had actually been looking forward to spending a night or two in hospital as it was going to be a new experience. Although we had been expecting the call, it came as we were watching the final…
I had a lot of questions , ranging from the wider ‘why has this happened to me’ through to more practical matters such as whether I could exercise during treatment and what to do if the side effects were bad. My advice would be to always ask questions during consultant appointments and make use of the Clinical Nurse Specialist team who in my hospital were available during office hours Monday-Friday. The consultant may…
Telling people you have cancer is not an easy thing to do as it is not just something you slip into a conversation. Starting a conversation in this way is fraught with difficulty too. I told my wife as soon as I got home from the neck biopsy and she was predictably shocked but immediately adopted a ‘we’ll get through this together’ approach which was very comforting. We told our daughter, who is 17, a few days later.…
Before treatment started I underwent regular blood tests, CT and PET scans and a bone marrow biopsy so the medical team knew exactly how my non-Hodgkin lymphoma was progressing, where it was located and whether I was fit enough to undergo treatment. I was shocked to see how much cancer there was in my body when I got the results of the PET scan. For me, the worst part of the whole experience was the bone marrow biopsy…
I was told I had cancer during a neck biopsy procedure on 29th October 2019. However I though this moment should have played out, this wasn’t it. In TV programmes and films you are summoned into an office, told to take a seat and soothingly informed by a doctor that ‘they have some bad news to tell you’. In my case, the radiologist simply asked me if I was aware my lymph nodes were abnormally long, proceeded to take some…
