Day 9 10/3/20

Good morning Facebook chums.

Day 9

No headache at the moment, nausea persists.

This morning feels like I have made some progress, mind you every day is better than the last. Last Tuesday I moved in bed a bit too rigorously and caused my wound to open with a gush. Today I wake up without any dressings just serious tenderness and it's still pretty itchy.

Let's finally get to the mucinous neoplasm talked about earlier.

Just in case you are not completely up to speed I'll give you some background. On the 7 November 2017 I had a Right hemicolectomy (my ascending colon was removed then my transverse colon was attached to my small intestine). This was followed by a gruelling 3 months of chemotherapy which started just before Christmas . 6 months after my operation I started my slow return to work. In short I had bowel cancer.

Fast forward to 18th December 2019, I'm feeling good. In the intervening 2 years I've learnt to swim, stopped eating meat, cut right back on my alcohol consumption, lost 2 stone, learnt to kayak................... I'm healthier than I've been for years.

So I'm sitting in Treliske waiting for my annual ct scan. Scan goes ahead of schedule and I'm home in good time.

So far so good

Just before Christmas. My long standing follow up appointment is brought forward to 23rd December, to allow for some staffing changes. Although there is no evidence of a re-occurence of my cancer something has shown up on my scan, probably nothing important, but I need another type of scan.

Off on the 11th January for an all seeing PET scan. Still nothing conclusive. This was followed by an appointment with the consultant surgeon Mr Adam Widdison on the 21st Feb who informed me this something, which may be nothing, was growing and in 3 to 6 months will be inoperable. Still it may not be sinister. Although it was up to me I was strongly advised to get it sorted. A biopsy was not possible nor was keyhole surgery. So I was booked in for the big dig.

Now what transpired was deep in my abdomen, close to my spine and near some vital blood vessels there lurked a Mucinous neoplasm. A type of mucus, very hard to detect (hard to spot snot) which, in my case, was cancerous and if left unchecked would have done me in in a very short time.

Last time I reckon it took 2 years to fully recover. This time, thankfully I don't need chemo, recovery has started. Roll on summer.

Ok I think that's enough for today it's 09.40 time to shuffle into action.