All of you know that I’ve got lung cancer, some know the whole story, others bits and pieces so I thought I’d do a sort of bad news letter every now and then to keep you all up to date.
The story so far
Recently I’ve been doing the Atkins diet. I was over 100 kilo and thought time to do something about it so with the motto “my food eats vegetables” I set about trying to eat anything that moves with a green side salad. With the diet and taking long walks I lost 20 kilos and was feeling fitter than I had for years. I’d given up cigarettes two years ago. Occasionally I coughed up some nasty stuff with brown flecks in it in the mornings but as this was only now and then and I was feeling great I put off going to the doctors. If I was sick I’d feel ill. Eventually I did go and was sent for an x-ray. One hour later I was having a tube shoved up my nose, down into the lungs where they took a few clippings. I saw all on the screen, funny looking things lungs from the inside. I was to have had the results on the Thursday but I was going over to England on the Wednesday to see Bob Dylan that weekend. They seemed shocked that I wouldn’t cancel my trip but by my reckoning it would make no difference to the result and I’d never seen Bob Dylan before.
So the next week I got the results, bad x-ray, and negative biopsy. I then had a CT scan, blood check, another bronchoscopy (as the first one turned out negative) and a test to see how much oxygen I was taking on board.
The following week I got the results. The Doctor told me the right lung had to go. I was quite happy with that, if you’ve got a bad lung get rid of the bugger. But first they wanted to do a look see operation to see if it had spread. The next week I had the op, the first of my life.
That weekend I gave a cocktail party as I knew good or bad result I was going into chemo, a good time was had by all. On the Monday, 26th July (black Monday) the doc told me it had spread and was incurable. God I got pissed that afternoon. He wanted me to go straight into hospital for chemo. I’d booked two weeks in August to go to the Cropredy festival (Fairport Convention) and then on down to Cornwall and then to see my mother in Bournemouth. His schedule and mine didn’t quite fit together so I told him I’d start the treatment when I got back.
The next day he phoned and told me he’d managed to make a schedule that fitted us both and to go in for the first chemo session the next day. This I did. Chemo is not fun; so far the cure (cure?) has been worse than the disease. So I’m off to England on Wednesday (11th Aug) and will be back in two weeks and straight back into hospital for round two.
I’m sorry to have rambled on so much, future bulletins will be shorter. Thanks for all the good wishes and support you’ve sent me, it means a lot to me,
Love, Steve.
