Hi, my name is Neil Hanvey, and I'm a 34-year-old father of two, married to a wonderful wife called Andrea. We'd like to thank Macmillan for all the help they've given us since I was diagnosed with cancer.
In February 2013, I started noticing that I was going to the toilet a lot more than normal, sometimes into double figures. I was experiencing loud stomach cramps and the need to go, but nothing would pass except gas. I also noticed some mucus and blood...
I thought at first that I had piles and told my wife about it. We talked about it and I decided to go to my GP. I visited the GP, and he told me to stop eating roughage and sent me away. He didn’t examine me and seemed a little dismissive of my fears. After a week, I used my employer’s private healthcare scheme to see a gastroenterologist.
The specialist mentioned Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis. Although a bit shocking, it did explain my symptoms, and he scheduled me in for a sigmoidoscopy.
We've setup a Just Giving page to raise some money for Macmillan so that they can continue to help families like us to deal with cancer. If you'd like to donate please click on the link below.
JustGivingWe sent our little girl to her grandparents and went to see Counting Crows play in Bristol. I remember thinking how my life would be different with ulcerative colitis. I’d have to take steroids and immunosuppressants. We decided to start trying for another baby as we knew that the drugs would affect fertility.
I arrived for the sigmoidoscopy a week later. In preparation for the procedure, I had to have a phosphate enema this involves a nurse squirting a solution into your bum, you then have to hold it in for a couple of minutes before it takes effect. I think I managed about 20 seconds.
The doctor examining me gave me Entonox to relax me during the procedure so everything was a bit hazy. I remember looking at the screen and thinking, "it can’t be ulcerative colitis because there are no ulcers". It turns out that there were no ulcers, just a tumor about the size of a Mars bar.
My whole world crumbled when I told Andrea. She's a senior Biomedical Scientist at the hospital so she knew exactly what was happening. Cancer is a bad word; to me at the time it meant dying in a hospice while my family cried at my bedside. I’m 33 and this can’t be happening to me.
The next week was a blur. I remember trying to tell my parents and just breaking down on the phone. How do you tell your parents that you might have cancer? It’s not something you practice in front of the mirror.
When we went to the specialist to get the biopsy results I was hoping that it was benign, I’m 33 married with an 18-month-old girl, I can’t have cancer. I fell to pieces when he said it was malignant. All I could think about was that I was going to die. I didn’t fully grasp what the doctor was saying to me but he mentioned the word cure. He said that they hoped to cure me. I remember telling him ‘I need to live’.
When you’re living with cancer, money worries can be as distressing as the illness itself. Macmillan eases these worries by offering information and support over the phone and in person at their local benefits advice services. They also have a financial guidance service and give one-off payments called Macmillan Grants.
Macmillan gave us financial advice when I was forced to take sick leave after my operation and during my chemotherapy treatments. Thanks to a Macmillan grant we were able to get away for a weekend and enjoy a taste of normality.
My wife says that the saddest thing she’s ever seen is my face as we got into the car after this meeting. I felt like everything was falling apart again. We’d tried to convince ourselves that it was going to be benign. I keep repeating it but I’m 33, this isn’t supposed to happen yet.
It was at this point that I made the news public; I broke down at work at one point. It’s surprising how many people want to talk to you once you have cancer; the problem is that nobody really knows what to say.
I spread the word via Facebook, it’s how some of my family found out, not the ideal method but I didn’t feel like ringing round everyone with the news besides I had more pressing things on my mind.
Macmillan was started by a volunteer and volunteers are very much at the heart of everything they do. Thousands of volunteers dedicate their time, skills and energy to help improve the lives of people affected by cancer and inspire millions of others to do the same. Whether you do this for a few hours a year or you’re available for longer, you can make a real difference. There are many different ways volunteers can get involved with Macmillan.
Visit macmillan.org.uk/volunteer for more information.
The specialist decided that the next step was a colonoscopy. This means another camera up the bum—it was starting to feel like a documentary series. They actually have to reel it in off a spool.
This procedure was to make sure that the cancer hadn’t spread further up into my bowels, something that would have been bad news. The preparation for this procedure consisted of 4 litres of laxative. I’ve never felt emptier in my life.
The results were good—no spread was visible. This was the first good news since I had been told I had cancer. If it hadn’t spread, then maybe we could do something about it.
The next step was scans. If you’ve never had an MRI scan, it’s basically a giant tube filled with magnets. You’re placed into this tube and then made to lie perfectly still for 30 minutes while it makes a lot of noise. It’s like being buried in a giant metal coffin while someone plays German techno music.
If you look after someone with cancer, you may not think of yourself as a carer. Yet the support you provide is vital—from helping with shopping and dressing to simply being there when they need to talk.
Macmillan knows that without the right support, providing this care can have a big impact on you—physically, emotionally, and financially. They’re here to provide that support to you.
Macmillan was there to provide support and advice to Andrea when she needed it the most. They made sure that she didn’t have to go through this on her own.
"When Neil was diagnosed, it was like my mind clicked into autopilot. I had to be strong, get organized, and ask all the questions. My personal and work life had collided in the worst possible way.
The first few weeks, we were devastated, wondering what we were going to do, how we were going to manage. I rang the Macmillan helpline, and they were so helpful, putting us in touch with people and services that we would need over the coming months."
– Andrea
What the MRI scan does is show if the cancer has spread anywhere. The first place it would go to would either be my lungs or my liver. Turns out that it hadn’t moved into either of these. Another small victory.
After the MRI came the CT scan. You're pushed through a giant metal ring while lying down. The only difference is that a radioactive dye is pumped into your body so that the radiographers can see where certain organs are.
The CT scan builds a 3D model of the area so that the surgeons can see where the tumor is, how big it is, and how it lies in relation to other organs.
The worst bit about this ordeal is the radioactive dye; it has a weird side effect that makes you feel like you’ve peed yourself.
It was at this point that we got our second bombshell. We were now battling cancer and expecting a baby. This was amazing news but it meant our lives were going to get a lot more complicated.
With all the information available we were asked to meet a surgeon who would share the plan with us. I would be placing my future in this mans hands and he would be placing his hands inside my body (specifically my bum).
He had a basic outline of a body on a piece of paper on his desk, he drew around the bottom area and said this is where the cancer is, we’re going to cut it out and then give you a permanent stoma. He then stopped talking to see my reaction. I remember telling him I didn’t care what he did as long as I got to live.
If the options are wearing a bag for the rest of my life or dying then it’s an easy choice. He went through the rest of the details and explained that I’d have to speak to the colorectal nurses who would explain to me what a stoma would entail.
In 2012, Macmillan supported 5.7 million people affected by cancer.
Help us to say thanks to Macmillan for supporting us.
Thanks to the colorectal nurses, I now know everything about stomas. A stoma looks like a giant red puckered circle with a hole in the middle. On average, they’re roughly 4cm in diameter. It’s essentially a new poo hole. The pipes inside are re-routed to this new opening, and the old exit is sealed off inside.
One of the main differences to a normal bumhole is that a stoma does not have a sphincter, so there is no way to control it. This means that you poo or fart whenever it gets to the exit. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to what problems this can cause.
Normally, stomas can be reversed. The damage is repaired, and in time, the pipes are re-routed back to their original exit. My problem was that the tumor was only 2cm in from the hole. This meant that my sphincter would have to be removed permanently, leaving me with a seam like a Ken doll. I would never do a normal poo again. On the plus side, I can poo anywhere.
To make sure that the cancer did not spread any more before surgery and to sterilize the area surrounding the tumor, I was scheduled to receive a short course of radiotherapy. This involved an hour’s drive to Cheltenham every day for a week to endure five minutes of radiotherapy. Once again, I was lying down on a machine while a particle accelerator fired waves of radiation at my ass.
After every treatment, I’d experience waves of nausea while we drove back home to Hereford. Some people have to endure six weeks of daily visits; I don’t envy these people, especially if they have to travel.
If at any point you have symptoms similar to mine—weight loss, blood or mucus in your poo, stomach pains or cramps, or any changes to your bowel habits like diarrhea, constipation, or increased poo count—go see a doctor.
I'm here writing this now because I went to the doctor early. Don't be embarrassed about it, just get yourself checked out. I'd rather have some doctor’s finger up my bum than be dead.
"Certain points throughout this last year have been extremely hard. The first was obviously the day that Neil was diagnosed. The second was going to the appointments for the scan results. I couldn’t breathe, I’d never been so anxious in all my life.
One of the most awful days was the operation. When Neil left the room to walk down to theatre, I broke down and cried for about three hours.
When I phoned and they said he was having complications, I thought, “That’s it, I’m never going to see my husband alive again.” When I saw him on the ward afterwards, I was so relieved he was alive."
– Andrea
On June 26th, I did my last poo like a normal person. It was rather uneventful, to be honest, mainly mucus and blood. I can remember filling in numerous forms, and finally, I said goodbye to my wife and walked down towards the operating theater. I’d opted for the epidural to be done while I was asleep because I’m scared of needles. The last thing I remember was the anaesthetist looking at coats on eBay as I drifted to sleep.
Bang! I woke with a start and couldn’t stop shaking. I was in a recovery room, and a doctor was asking me if this was normal. I’d never had my bum removed before, so I couldn’t really comment. My operation had taken about four hours, and I was supposed to have been in recovery for another hour. I eventually spent three hours in recovery while they tried to stop me from shaking.
Andrea spent all this time wondering what had happened to me. She rang up and was told that there had been some complications. They couldn’t get my pain relief sorted and my blood pressure kept dropping.
Eventually I was wheeled onto a surgical ward. Andrea and her dad walked into the ward just as I arrived.
I can’t remember much that happened for the next couple of days. I do remember that I was in a lot of pain. Like megapain or some other made up word. It turns out that the epidural was on my chest and lower legs instead of my bum and the surrounding area. Not only could I feel the giant hole where my bum used to be but I also couldn’t move my upper body or legs.
My epidural was removed and I was switched onto a morphine dispenser. This meant that I was given a little clicker that when pressed released a hit of morphine. It only works every 10 mins so that you can’t overdose; the only problem was that the nurses kept telling me to press the button whenever I felt pain.
This still doesn’t make sense to me because if 10 mins haven’t elapsed since your last hit then all you’re doing is making a clicking noise, which doesn’t do much for the pain.
One of the most surreal parts of this whole story has to be sperm banking. Due to the damaging nature of chemotherapy we were recommended not to try naturally for any more kids for the next 5 years after treatment finished.
As IVF is a recommended backup plan in this situation I needed to travel to Gloucester hospital three times to make a deposit in their sperm bank. It takes 45 minutes to get to Gloucester hospital from Hereford. 45 minutes sat in a car so that I can go knock one out in a hospital.
They give you a lockable room with it’s own toilet, some comfy chairs and a draw full of inspiring literature. Most of the literature is five years old.
"The recovery in hospital was full of complications especially when Neil ended up in intensive care. Neil was ok the day he ended up in ICU, I saw him after work and I was returning home for tea to return for visiting hours. When I got back there were doctors and nurses working on him, after an emergency scan he was taken to ICU. I was so nervous walking into ICU, I didn’t know what to expect. There was Neil plugged into the Starship Enterprise!"
– Andrea
Physiotherapists visited me to encourage me to get up and about, this is the point where I became that guy from Holby City who you see walking past in the background clutching onto a machine mounted on a pole on wheels.
My next bodily modification was an NG tube. This is a flexible tube that gets inserted into your nose and goes all the way down into your stomach. They use it to syringe gas out of your stomach before it makes you vomit. It tends to fill up with green bile and random bits of digested food, altogether a bit grim.
t was at this point that I was placed on a sips only diet. I was only allowed 15ml of fluid every hour, no food. This isn’t even a straw full of drink. This had to continue until my bowels moved.
It was around this time that my health took a turn for the worse and I was moved onto the ICU ward. This is a critical care ward where you are constantly monitored. A lot of the people on this ward have been involved in serious accidents. I had fluid on my lungs and septicemia. Andrea says that I nearly died; I was too busy feeling ill to notice.
My only memories of this time were of a patient’s mom speaking really loudly on a mobile phone at all hours and my dad asking me to fix his Internet connection. I had to explain to him that I had more pressing matters to attend to.
One day I was sat watching TV when I felt like I was going to fart. It was a couple of seconds before I realised that there wasn't actually anything down there to fart out of. I asked my surgeon who explained to me that I was experiencing phantom farts. My bum wasn't possessed or anything, it was simply my brain telling me that I needed to fart but it didn't know that I no longer had a bumhole. It's similar to what amputees experience.
I was eventually moved back onto the surgical ward and this is when I finally realized that I had surgical wounds.
The operation I had undergone was called an advanced AP resection. They do a horizontal cut under your tummy and a few incisions are made either side of your belly button for the laparoscopic instruments to be inserted.
A drain tube is inserted into your abdomen to allow wound juices to escape and finally a kind of apple corer is inserted into your bottom to remove your bum hole. I lost a stone in a day and also my coccyx.
All these holes need to heal; at this point they still had metal stitches in them. One of the surgeons suggested shaving me so that the dressing they put on top of these wounds would be easier to remove during the two times a day they needed to be changed. The dressings were essentially giant absorbent pads taped over the holes to absorb the brown and red goo that oozed out of them.
One of my enduring memories is of a surgeon standing over my nude body brandishing a razor saying to me in an Italian accent, “Do you trust me?" while 4 nurses looked on. Those skilled hands that have done so many operations then proceeded to shave my balls and my bum. I think this is the point that I stopped caring about what other people thought and any inhibitions I had disappeared.
Ella has gotten used to daddy’s special bum now. She likes to get me a new bag out of my supply drawers while I’m cleaning it. She also makes sure to shout, “Daddy farted!" whenever my stoma makes a noise.
She likes to watch me change it while she has her evening bath. I got emotional once when she told me she wanted a bag. Hopefully she never has to experience any of this.
Macmillan have been with us every step of the way. I can still remember sitting with Alison Stemp, trying not to cry while we told her our situation.
Help us to offer this support to other families and individuals. Click here to visit our JustGiving page.
I was originally due to spend 4-5 days in hospital while I regained my strength before I was to be sent home to recuperate. I spent a total of 15 days in hospital during one of the worst heat waves in recent memory.
I had various people visit me during this time ranging from immediate family and friends to work colleagues. It's sad that it takes something like this to see who your real friends are.
Andrea visited me every day on her breaks while working at the same time in the Histology department at the other end of the hospital. She and her parents looked after our daughter and tried to shield her from the worst of it. This was me cashing in on the In Sickness bit from our wedding vows.
I was eventually discharged with a giant bag of pills, a selection of dressings, and instructions that the district nurses would be visiting me twice a day to monitor and change my surgical wound dressings.
Andrea parked on a double yellow line outside the hospital doors while a porter wheeled me down one of the bumpiest corridors in the entire NHS.
I still couldn’t sit down due to the pain so I had to lower my seat and lie down on it. I gritted my teeth and we went home to begin my recovery phase.
By the time I left hospital I’d probably met or been helped by at least 70 members of staff. These included surgical staff, ward nurses, care workers, physiotherapists, tissue viability specialists, phlebotomists, porters, catering staff, cleaners, colorectal nurses, surgeons, doctors, anesthetists and student nurses. At least half of these people have seen my bare bum.
The Yeleni Center in Hereford offers a number of alternative treatments for cancer patients. This is a complementary therapy center offering massages, acupuncture, and many other services in a relaxed environment.
Herefordshire Carers Support provides support and advice for carers. Carers are often overlooked in these demanding situations.
You can learn more about the services Yeleni offers here.
You can find more info about Herefordshire Carers Support here.
I think coming home was the point at which my depression started. The hospital had shielded me from some of the realities of what had happened because it was so far removed from my normal life. Something as normal as sitting on the sofa was now impossible due to the pain from my wounds.
In the hospital the physiotherapists have you walking around and sitting in one of those really comfortable chairs you get next to your bed. Once you’re at home without your morphine it becomes a whole different experience. I was told that I couldn’t lift anything heavy for at least 6 months after my operation. They classed a kettle as heavy.
The frustration at not being able to pickup Ella or help Andrea around the house made me angry at times. Throughout my recovery Andrea has constantly looking after me, Ella and done anything else that needed doing.
I spent the next couple of months in my pants and a dressing gown, lying painfully in bed or on the sofa. Everything took a tremendous amount of effort—getting up, washing myself with a flannel, and going up and down stairs.
During these early months of recovery the district nurses would change my wound dressings and monitor my health twice daily. Nearly every day I would see a new face and have to explain my story again. Yes I am young, yes we are unlucky and yes we have had a rough time of it. Eventually my wounds started to leak less and my visits were reduced to once a day. Things looked like they were getting better.
Ouch! I had noticed a new stomach pain, it wasn’t much at first but then I started throwing up. I realized that I hadn’t been to the toilet in a few days but thought nothing of it. A few days later and nothing had changed except I was now in agony. It felt like I had eaten razor blades and I couldn’t even keep a glass of water down. If I didn’t get fluids in me soon I was going to be in trouble. My bowels appeared to have stopped working.
I spent the first few months of my home recovery sitting in a puddle while my sacral wound oozed serous fluid. My wound was necrotic so I had to have something called Intrasite Gel applied, this liquefies the dead flesh to prepare the wound for healing. We visited the surgeon after a couple of weeks of this treatment to see if enough flesh had been eaten away to proceed to the next stage.
I remember the surgeon grabbing a scalpel while I was lay in front of him with my bum in the air. His next words were “I’m just going to take a look at the wound." I looked round at him holding a surgical blade inches from my bum and said, “You look with your eyes, not your hands!" He then proceeded to cut all the remaining dead flesh away.
The Macmillan Renton Unit (MRU) is a partnership between Wye Valley NHS Trust and Macmillan Cancer Support to provide a purpose-built cancer unit at The County Hospital, Hereford.
Wye Valley NHS Trust contributed £959,000.00 to the new facility, with Macmillan Cancer Support contributing nearly £2.7 million—of which £1.7 million was raised through local fundraising. The total cost of the project was £4.8 million.
We rang the Community Stoma Nurse who came round straight away with laxatives. My problem was that I would be unable to keep tablets or fluids down so I would need a suppository. At this point we also decided to ring the GP to see what our options were. The GP visited, checked my temperature, which was quite high and arranged for me to go back into hospital.
After seeing a trainee doctor on Black Wednesday I was eventually admitted onto a ward and left alone. We spent the next 3 days in hospital wondering if a Doctor was going to show up while the laxatives took effect.
It turns out that I had an adhesion in my bowels. This is a sort of kink in the bowels caused by scar tissue. It had created a blockage that had resulted in the immense pain I had felt. We eventually walked out of the hospital because my sheets hadn’t been changed for the last 3 days and I was lying in a mixture of blood and sweat. My wounds were in danger of getting infected and it was at this point that both Andrea and me realized that the only people we could count on were each other.
We set up a JustGiving page to raise some money for Macmillan so they can continue helping families like us deal with cancer.
As we were now nearing the start of my chemotherapy treatment and my wounds were becoming more manageable Andrea decided to take on the role of nurse. She was already caring for me both mentally and physically so why not medically. The district nurses agreed to come out every Friday to make sure that everything was going to plan.
My wounds were simple, remove the old dressing, clean and finally pack them with surgical ribbon before placing a big sticky pad over the top. The hole in my bum was initially big enough to place your fist into. It was still a large hole but after the surgeon had removed all the necrotic flesh surrounding it with a scalpel at a recent clinic appointment it was showing signs of slowly getting smaller.
"The recovery at home was a long slow process coupled with the anticipation of starting chemotherapy. What stressful time chemotherapy was. I can honestly say caring for Neil whilst being heavily pregnant, working full time and looking after Ella was exhausting. After Luke was born Macmillan put us in contact with the Home Start charity. They were able to provide us with a few hours help in the home each week."
Andrea
Macmillan were there when we needed help, they make sure that you don't have to face cancer alone. We've setup a Just Giving page to raise some money for Macmillan so that they can continue to help families like us to deal with cancer. If you'd like to donate please click on the link below.
JustGiving
After a few hiccups involving infections and illness I was finally ready for chemotherapy. 6 months of treatment, 12 sessions of sitting in a chair while a poisonous mixture of chemicals is pumped into me. Because this happens every other week, to reduce the need to continually cannulate me they fit you with something called a PICC Line.
This is a tube about as thick as a headphone lead inserted into your bicep that goes all the way into your heart. It has a valve at the end that allows the nurses to connect you up to the chemotherapy pump. This line stays in for the entirety of treatment. It must be kept dry so you end up showering with a rubber sleeve on. It also needs to be flushed once a week to keep the line open.
Chemotherapy affects everybody differently but one thing it seems to do to everyone is take away their energy. My first session seemed ok. I went into the chemo suite, sat down with a film on my iPad and about 4 hours later I was on my way home. I awoke the next day to find my head spinning and my stomach churning like I’d spent the whole night on a roundabout. The feeling of nausea is immense. The closest I can describe the feeling is the worst hangover you can imagine mixed with seasickness.
Tiredness. I would have my treatment on a Wednesday and sleep until Sunday afternoon. Even now my little girl thinks I’m poorly if I sleep during the day. By the Saturday I was crying for no reason and feeling like I couldn’t take it anymore. Andrea must have felt frustrated because this happened every session with amazing regularity. During my chemo week I was a nightmare to be around, an emotional and physical mess.
The other notable side effect of chemo is Neuropathy. This would cause me to react to anything colder than my own temperature. Keys became icicles; coins were a nightmare to pick up. If I placed my hand into the fridge or freezer it felt like I had plunged my hands into an icy river. The hours following treatment were the worst. I remember going into a supermarket and taking my scarf off before going inside, the breath of cold air I took made me feel like my throat had closed shut.
"When Neil started chemo, neither of us knew what to expect. It was a different complication every week. I remember Neil's throat closed up due to one of the chemo drugs whilst it was being pumped in!
I have Ella on a Wednesday as I only work 4 days. That day I got to the Macmillan Renton unit and gave Ella to the volunteers and ran into the chemo suite to find Neil with an oxygen mask on!
I hated the Sunday before chemo week, every two weeks I’d have two "good" days with Neil and then we were back into the cycle and it was heart breaking.
The other thing I hated was the chemo pump he had to wear for 48 hours at home. I was so paranoid I'd catch it in bed. I remember having crazy nightmares about snakes being on me waking up to find the chemotherapy pump line touching me."
Andrea
Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down.
When we first found out that I had cancer we were obviously devastated. One of the things I did to take my mind off it was to take some of my hardback sketchbooks and write advice and stories for Ella to read when she got older, if for some reason I wasn’t around.
I can remember sitting on a bench opposite Hereford cathedral on the banks of the river writing the story of how Andrea and me met. A lot of the stories centered around our life at university and living in Manchester. Stories about what our lives were like when we were younger.
I wrote a list of all the people that featured in my stories, how I knew them and things they had done. It’s surprising how many people on this list contacted me once I made the news public. It takes a tragedy like this to know who your real friends are.
After a few treatments the District Nurses decided that they no longer wanted to come out to change my PICC line dressing as I was back in work part time. Their reasoning was that I should be able to drive to the hospital where the chemotherapy nurses could do it for me, even on weeks where I was supposed to be recuperating.
Once again Andrea and me felt angry and disappointed that another line of support was being taken away. The only people that we could really talk to about this were the Macmillan volunteers at the hospital. It sounds crazy but moaning to them about this was a big help, they knew what our situation was and understood the stresses and hoops we were jumping through to make my recovery work.
Andrea had become my carer over the last year, looking after me, looking after our young daughter and all this time she had been pregnant. One of her scans had actually taken place during my stay in hospital. I had been wheeled up to the scan room by a porter but had been unable to stay due to my condition. Andrea was once again afflicted with SPD and had to get around on crutches. We looked like the walking dead shuffling round the hospital.
As Christmas neared it became more and more clear that Andrea was going to go full term. Her due date was January 18th; this would place the birth during a chemo recuperation week. At this point setbacks like this were part of our daily life. It felt like we were constantly experiencing problems designed to destroy our morale.
On the 14th of January, a non-chemo week, Andrea went into labor. The following day our son Luke was born during an emergency c-section. I broke down in the theater, it was hard to imagine that 8 months earlier I had been diagnosed with cancer and here I was holding my newborn son. One of the theater staff helped me back to the delivery room and got me a drink. At last it felt like things were going to be ok. My next chemo session was delayed by a week due to exhaustion so I got to stay at home and enjoy my paternity leave.
Your legs might fall off occasionally Chemotherapy has a lot of side effects. We often found ourselves playing side effect bingo every week seeing which ones would affect me.
Some of the side effects of my treatment included risk of infection, bruising and bleeding, anaemia, feeling sick, numb or tingling hands or feet, tiredness, sore mouth, diarrhea, hair loss, eye problems, soreness and redness of the palms of your hands or soles of your feet, difficulty breathing and swallowing, changes in the way your heart works and hearing problems.
Throughout my treatment, operations, and all other events over the last year, Andrea has acted as my rock. She’s helped me pick up the pieces, she’s known what questions to ask, who to ask, and when to ask them. She’s arranged my appointments, rung up for my prescriptions. She’s done my wound dressings, washed me, fed me, cooked for me, and dressed me when I first came out of the hospital. She’s reminded me that I need to get better for the kids. She even rang the GP from her hospital bed after she gave birth to Luke to arrange an appointment for me.
She’s looked after our daughter while I’ve been too tired to move, when I’ve been vomiting or too dizzy to walk. She’s done all this while being pregnant and working. And she still laughs at all my jokes.
I finished chemo on the 28th of February. In my last session, I only had one of the drugs—earlier that month, I suffered an allergic reaction to one of the chemo drugs and had to wear an oxygen mask while a nurse injected antihistamines into my line. I was finally allergic to one of the drugs designed to kill any remaining cancer cells.
Six weeks post-chemo, and I can no longer feel my feet or hands due to neuropathy. It’s a mixture of pins and needles and prickly heat. This means that I’m now struggling to do buttons and occasionally fall over.
After a few months of this, we finally arranged a meeting with an Oncologist to discuss my options for treatment. They’ve given me Gabapentin and Tramadol for the pain, and it seems to be working.
Neuropathy is a strange illness. They have no way of knowing if it’s permanent, if it’s going to get better, or if it’s going to get worse. I just have to wait and see what happens, really. That’s okay, though—I have the rest of my life to worry about that.
Thank you from me, Andrea, Ella, and Luke to the following people and organizations. You all played your part. You've helped or supported us in some way throughout the last year, and we appreciate every single one of you.
Want to help us say thanks to Macmillan for all the support they've given us over the last year?
We've set up a JustGiving page to raise some money for Macmillan so that they can continue to help families like ours deal with cancer.
If you'd like to donate, please click on the link below.
