It was not too long after that I received a text message stating that I had an appointment with Mr. Lancaster in about 2 days time in Liverpool – Arrrrr….
I frantically called Paitent Transfers and I can only pressure that they are so used to last minute bookings, that I was booked on a flight to Liverpool in two days time and having to nominate someone to come with me, poor Sue got the short straw.
So the 11th August started off fairly alright, except when we finally go on the plan at Ronaldsway in the Isle of Man, we sore then start and stop the engines a few times only to be told that there was a problem and that we would need to get off whilst they fixed it, not really what you want to hear when you are boarding a plane. Anyway a little bit later we were told that they had fixed it thanks to the help of some gaffer tape and that we were now on track to get to Liverpool.
Once landed it was a fairly straight forward routine of collecting bags and walking to the exit where we met the allocated Taxi driver and we were delivered to ‘Start City Apartments’ in Liverpool and told that he would be back to c collect us later to go to Aintree for the consultation.
Extensive Nasopharyngeal Cancer with Bilateral Nodal Metastases.
Strange how knowing what its called was important, although I cannot pronounce it and will always call it ‘Fred’ or ‘Cancer’ from now on.
Now for the bad bits, what’s to follow. I will have to have a feeding tube fitted, mainly because I will find it very hard if not totally impossible to swallow even my own saliva let alone food, I have beed told that the treatment for this is not at all nice, all those lucky people with Liver and prostate cancers at least can eat and drink, whereas the treatment will cause blistering, ulcers and general badness to happen on all things soft inside my mouth, my tongue and throat will become too painful to basically enjoy anything at all, so I get tubes inserted and possibly the equivalent of baby food push directly into my stomach.
I do get to be pain medded up, if there is such a term, but I am hoping that this will be better than I am on at the moment which is basically not good enough, again more on this later.
7 weeks of Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy, and apparently not the nice stuff either, although I was kind of looking forward to my hair falling out so that I would not have to shave, but he informed me that this does not happen anymore due to the new chemicals they have available to them, so I don’t get a single break!
I need to have someone with me, I asked if Drew Barrymore or Davina McCall would be available, but sadly they do not offer that as a service.
I am going to be away from home for the entire time, fairly bored early own as treatment only takes 30 minutes or so, and later on I will be in too much pain to have any fun at all. My hope is that I can do a little fishing from the shore to take my mind off things as apparently I am being housed in the Wirral very close to the sea front.
And I was also told that it could take a few months to get back to eating and drinking normally again after all this, so basically told to look at around 6 months and pain and discomfiort.
So after an overload of long words, bad news, and even worse treatment to come, we decided to go back to Liverpool and find a nice restaurant for our last meal in the UK.
We managed to loc ate this little place near to the apartments, and the food (and service) was well scrum, really enjoyed it and certainly recommend to anyone reading this dribble.
