Well what can I say?  My husband and I were going through life as happy as can be and we now find that John has bowel cancer with secondaries in his liver.  This all started as he finally went to the doctors (after much nagging) about 8 weeks ago, The TV advert was what actually made him go. There he is sitting in the waiting room looking at the very attractive full wall display about bowel cancer and when he gets in to see the doctor he explains his symptons and tells the doctor he has bowel cancer.  Our Doctor is "very special" he has absolutely no tact or bedside manner and tells John in no uncertain terms that it is his job to do the diagnostics.  The Doctor carried out the expected examination and agreed that John should have tests carried out and that he tended to agree with the self diagnostics.  We went for the first endoscopy and were told that there was a tumour so he was booked in for scans and a bigger endoscopy.  After the second endoscopy we were told that there were no further tumours and what they had found was malignant but very operable - we left the hospital feeling quite reassured.  This feeling was shortlived as when we went back for all the results the tumour could not be operated on as the cancer had spread to his liver and chemo would be needed to get the liver under control.  As we left the hospital John uttered a very heartfelt expletive, I was useless I just cried when the consultant gave us the news.  Obviously for the next few days we were on an emotional rollercoaster.  John decided to tell people, the first was the worst.  After this all of our friends were told and if they asked they got all the details, in fact John found it helpful to talk to people and we are both humbled by the offers of help we have received from our friends.  I was not so brave I only told a few people and every time I did I burst into tears which was a shock to those I was telling as I am usually a hard faced bitch.  Anyway we now have a date to start chemo and are both positive about it - we made the decision to carry on as normal asking everyone to just treat John normally.  The number of people who approach both of us saying "how sorry they are to hear the new" has been amazing (we live in a small village so everyone gets to hear everything).  I must admit that my response has changed from thanking people for their concern to replying "not half as .......... sorry as we are".  Obviously we are at the beginning of this journey that we never wanted to start but have now decided to get on with our lives and enjoy ourselves