So I had cancer. It was in my bones. I was stage 4. Incurable. Advanced. Proper fucked. The last person I knew who had this diagnosis was my Mum and she died 8 weeks after she was diagnosed. She was too far gone to have any treatment. I desperately wanted a chance to fight for my life, for my future, to see my children grow up, to enjoy retirement with the Wingman. Next step was to get a proper diagnosis - where was the motherload?
A battery of scans and appointments followed. CT Scans, MRI scans, blood tests, endless calls with medical secretaries and private health insurance. Every time I had to explain things, it was like pouring acid into a deep cut. It was so painful, so deeply, soul crushingly painful. I decided to treat it like a job. It gave me an element of control and something to do.
I had a CT scan which showed a further lesion on my rib (not pulled intercostal muscles then!) and some suspicious nodules on my thyroid. Nothing on my liver or lungs.
I was referred privately to an oncologist (Dr Death) and I sought out an ENT surgeon (Mr Fit) who specialised in thyroid cancer. I was scheduled to see both Drs on the same day. In order to try and keep things as normal as possible for the children, we decided that The Wingman should do pick up and that my Dr friend would come with me to see the ENT guy at 1730 and The Wingman would come with me to see the oncologist at 1930.
Mr Fit was a dream. Confident, positive, action orientated. He felt my neck and said that he could feel the tumour and that he was pretty confident that we were looking at Thyroid Cancer. He wanted to do a needle biopsy to confirm the diagnosis, but he was recommending a total Thyroidectomy (removing my thyroid) asap. I asked him if he could keep me alive for my 40th birthday. He chuckled and said he would have thought so! I was encouraged. We had the start of a plan. I came home and was upbeat for the first time since the day I found out.
And then came the appointment with Dr Death. The Wingman and I were ushered out of the main hospital to a separate, special Cancer Care Centre. It was all very hushed and I was the youngest person there by about 20 years. I was lead in to see Dr Death by a specialist palliative Macmillan nurse and met Dr Death. HANG ON A MINUTE. Palliative care? What? Thats for people circling the drain? I felt sick, confused, panicked. Palliative care is not the same as end of life care, but at that stage, all I knew about palliative care nurses was that they were the team that made my mum comfortable as she was dying. Dr Death took my medical history and started to talk to me about my scan. He was obviously trying to convey how serious this was, that we were dealing with an “advanced cancer” and that we may never find the primary and I would have to be treated for a Cancer of Unknown Primary. The Macmillan nurse kept rubbing my knee and cocking her head and looking at me sympathetically. He was just negative and patronising and overly sympathetic. It was horrendous. I told The Wingman that I was never ever setting foot in his office EVER again. So I didn’t.
I had my biopsy done. It involves a bit of local anaesthetic and a massive needle in the neck and a lot of keeping very still. It wasn’t too painful, I got patched up and then disappeared to the Isle of Wight for a long weekend.
The results took ages to come back, but when they did, they confirmed Thyroid Cancer. The next stage was to confirm that the tumours in bones were from the Thyroid Cancer and that I wasn’t the lucky receipiant of 2 cancers. Another biopsy, this time on the tumour in my rib. Pretty grim, mainly because I could hear my rib being snipped but again not too bad. More waiting (are you seeing a theme here?). More waiting for the phone to ring, more chasing but eventually we found that I only had the one cancer.