Cancer

As most of you will be now aware, I lost my son on 10th December 2022 to secondary liver cancer. His battle with this terrible disease was short and thankfully almost pain free due to timely medication. He never really stood a chance because his cancer went undetected from the 4th August 2022 when he was first admitted to hospital with a huge infection that presented as abscesses and was everywhere, in his stomach, his liver, his kidney, caused problems with his lungs and his heart in the later stages.
He fought off the infection and it took him 4 months to do so, but he got his CRP rate (infection rate) down from 367 to 25 during that 4 months. We had a whole 24 hours of celebration over his ‘win’, especially as his consultant was shocked that he had managed to accomplish this massive feat and against all odds.

To be completely thorough at that time, his consultant ordered one last CT scan to determine that all of the abscesses had indeed gone and he was on the mend. The results came back 24 hours later and that was when his diagnosis of secondary cancer was revealed. A biopsy quickly followed, the results of the lung drain carried out just one week before came back before the biopsy results were in. The lung fluid had revealed lymphatic cells in the lung.
He had only been holding back the cancer with the mass infection which was in effect preventing the cancer from spreading. Curing the infection created the perfect conditions for the cancer to travel around his body unchecked. By the time the biopsy results had come back, he was already in the end of life stages of cancer, 5 and a half days later he died.

That was two months and 10 days ago exactly on 20th February 23.

On the 31st October 2022 I noticed a small lump that had appeared on my left side just under the rib cage on my back. I was shocked to find it, it was hard and round and was roughly the size of a penny. I went to the doctors on the 1st November 2022 and was told by the Nurse Practitioner (better qualified than a nurse, less qualified than a GP) that I had a harmless lipoma that was annoying but ultimately nothing to worry about. He told me to keep a check on it from time to time to make sure it was remaining around the same size and he sent me home with a nothing to worry about diagnosis.
Now, from the first November to the 22nd of December (the day after Dan’s funeral) I never paid much attention to that lipoma, I was watching my son die and my world had shrunk to just him and him alone.
It wasn’t until the day after Dan’s funeral (22nd December 22) that I realised I was experiencing a lot of back pain especially in the left side of my body, I checked the lump and was shocked to find it was now roughly the size of a small egg. I made an immediate appointment for the following day with the proper GP, not the pretend one. I appreciate the nurse practitioners are helpful on a large scale in a Doctors surgery for any normal sort of ailment, but lumps and bumps in my opinion should always be checked out by a properly trained GP. I wish I’d had that thought at the time but my mind was consumed with the unfolding tragedy of my lovely son’s rapidly declining health. I accepted the first feasible diagnosis and went on my merry way.

I saw my GP about the lump on the 23rd of December and he immediately raised an appointment for the 19th January for an X ray appointment at my local hospital at 9am in the morning.

My GP phoned me with those results before I had even left the hospital and he had organised an MRI scan at a hospital that is roughly 50 miles away from me that would be carried out on 30th January at 9.10am.
I then received a further appointment for the 31st January at the same hospital in Oswestry for the results of the MRI scan with the Professor who would be overlooking my case and working on the diagnosis. Skip to the 31st of January, I met with the Professor and he was unsettled with the findings of the MRI scan, he had ordered a biopsy to be carried out that same afternoon. It was no longer taking weeks between appointments, it was now taking hours. I was very alarmed at the swift change of pace, but the Professor refused to be drawn on any further details until he had the facts in front of him.

Followed was the longest 10 days of my life since my son’s diagnosis and subsequent death from cancer. The range of emotions and trauma I went through, from hoping it was cancer because at least I wouldn’t have to continue through my life without my son for much longer to knowing deep in my bones that I have to beat this because cancer had already robbed me of my boy, it was not taking me down too. I have too much to accomplish both in his name and my own before I get off this mortal coil.

My whole life had already crumbled and become unrecognisable in any real way, but now I was stood in the middle of a complete wasteland of shattered dreams, hopes and wishes, that was all that was left of my previous life. I felt like I was frozen in time and I might never recover from it all. I determined to push my way through regardless, I had no other choices.

On Tuesday 14th February I received the news from the biopsy. I thought I was prepared for everything and anything. Still heavily focused on my intense grief over losing my son to this dreadful disease, I think I may have pushed away the reality that it could happen to me to.

It has, I have adenocarcinoma, originating from the right lung which is the primary source. The lump on my back is actually a secondary cancer that has spread from the primary source.
When I heard I have lung cancer, I immediately began to blame myself obviously thinking it must be smoking related and I had done this to myself. I haven’t and it isn’t smoking related in any way at all. Apparently, it is more likely to have been triggered by the intense trauma of my son’s final months that culminated in his untimely death. When I was originally told the news I immediately began to feel guilty because I was being told that there was a large possibility of receiving controlling treatment to prolong my life with a good quality of life and I could survive even while living with cancer. My guilt stemmed from the fact that I was being given all of the options that had been taken away from my son. Why did I get to survive and not him.
It has complicated my thinking enormously over the past week but I am coming to terms with the fact that regardless of what I would wish for, the reality will always remain the same. My cancer has hopefully been found in time to be able to effectively treat it. My son’s was only found at the very end with no time left to do anything except make him comfortable in his final days.

Regardless, the upshot is, I have a chance to have this treated with targeted treatment radiotherapy to shrink the tumours which should reduce the amount of pain I’m in and allow me to have quality of life between treatments. If the treatments work and I respond well to them then there is no reason why I couldn’t live for another 10 – 15 years which I will happily take. I have things I wish to accomplish in both our names and for that I need time.

It is, as they say, in the lap of the gods now, how my body responds, how quickly they can get the cancer under control and how long they can keep it at bay. They cannot cure secondary cancer, they can only control it’s progression. I am officially on borrowed time and the last leg of my life journey, come what may.

My son never had the opportunity to have treatment because they couldn’t find the primary source of his cancer and to make matters worse the secondary had gone straight to the liver which processes a third of our blood vessels every single day. He never stood a chance. It is a blessing of sorts that he went so quickly and without pain or the realisation he was dying before he actually died. It is no small blessing that he is not here to witness me being this poorly with a very uncertain future. He would have been devastated by this news and in his weakened state of health it would have created an impossible situation for us both.

What I do know and believe deep in my heart is that he would have wanted me to fight this, take every treatment offered and live my life to its fullest before conceding defeat at the very end. We do all have that one guarantee in life and that is we are all eventually going to die. How and when isn’t normally known to us and like my son, when it does become apparent, if we are lucky we don’t have time to dwell on the horridness of it all before we are no longer here.
I know what I have is not curable, I know there is a limit to how much the health service can do, I know there is some kind of open ended time limit as to how long I have, but in the meantime, I will continue to work through my grief process and come to terms with my deep and dreadful loss of my boy, but I will begin to bring my life back out into the sunshine and take each day as it comes with hopefully as many smiles as there will be tears.

I owe us both that much.