“It’s OK, we’ve caught it early.”

“It’s ok”, they said, “we’ve caught it early, we can sort it out with chemo and radio, then some more surgery” 

So off I went to see an oncologist. She put me on 6 weeks of daily radiotherapy with tablet form chemo plus weekly intravenous chemo. For good measure.

The first two weeks was fine – up early and into St Luke’s in Guildford, who were fantastic. Pop onto the machine, get radio’d, go home. After two weeks the radiotherapy side effects kicked in. My God, it was brutal. Literally couldn’t be more than two steps from the loo – and even then, I didn’t make it on a few occasions! The weird thing was that sometimes when you wanted to go it was like trying to pass a bowling ball. Never known pain like it. In the end my bowel got blocked it was so bad – I avoided more surgery through high doses of lactulose and gritted teeth.