will he or won't he? well, okay, he WILL, but WHEN? ...

Okay, I'm not going to harp on about my diagnosis and treatment (or maybe I will, 'cos, now that I think about it, without harping on, there probably wouldn't be much of a blog here *GRINS*), but the thing is, I am due to start on my chemotherapy treatment on Wednesday March 31st (had I mentioned that before?).

And, as we all know, chemo pretty much nearly always results in hair loss for the lucky(!) recipient, amongst other fun side effects, more on which I am sure I'll blog as time goes on. But this blog is about hair loss.

Now, I'm sure that my brother won't mind (too much) me saying here that, well, of the two of us, I've been the one to hold onto my hair better, and, while it's not really a big thing for me, keeping my hair has been something I've been quietly pleased about over the years. My Dad started losing his hair in his early twenties, so as I drift towards my 49th birthday (no, honestly, I can't believe it either!), having maintained a thatch on top was something I had kind of become used to. I don't go to any extraordinary  lengths to look after it, for all that, but it's been a constant and you kind of expect it to still be there when you look in the mirror each morning.

But there is a very strong probability that, at some point over the coming months, it won't be!

I've accepted that, and I know that once all the treatment is over, it is likely to come back, but I'm not going to get too upset about it. It is just one of those things, and to tell you the truth, I'll take hair loss if it means that this cancer-thingy in me gets gone in the process! But, as those of you who've been following my story over the past couple of years know, I'm in the business of fundraising for Cancer Research UK (CRUK) too, through my 365challenge (hence my id: 365er). If you're new and haven't come across this part of my story, click through here for more details: 365CHALLENGE. The 365challenge has been a great success. Personally, my fundraising is not that far short of £9000, and as a group (there are at present around 12 365ers around the country), we've raised over £28K for CRUK so far. But we can do better, and I am seeing my impending baldness as an opportunity to add to the pot ...

So ... I want to open a book on "When will Colin lose his Hair". Here are the facts as I know them: I am due to have three cycles of chemotherapy, with a drug cocktail called ABVD. Three cycles means six treatments, each approximately two weeks apart, starting on March 31st, and running through to around the end of June, with possibly some radiotherapy to follow. Now, as you can see, I have a full head of hair as of today (now, stop that!), and I promise I won't take any action to remove that until such time as it starts to fall out, at which point I will probably have it all shaved off. For the purposes of this "bet", that will be the point when I will consider that I have "lost" my hair. 

What I'm asking you to do, dear reader, it to place your bets now as to when you think this is going to happen. The choices are: Before Chemo starts (unlikely); After Session 1; After Session 2; After Session 3; After Session 4; After Session 5; After Session 6; During Radiotherapy; Not At All (you optimist, you!). 

I have no idea when it might happen, and nor has my cancer nurse, so it really is about having a bit of fun about my demise, taking a wild guess, and supporting your guess with a contribution to my JustGiving page for my 365challenge for CRUK. Click through here - justgiving.com/365challenge - to lodge your guess/bet (any amount welcome, but JustGiving do have a minimum donation of £2), listing "After Session 1", etc, in the comments section to indicate your choice, and adding your support generally. Now the thing is, there is no prize as such, other than knowing that you correctly guessed when/if I will capitulate to the hair fairies, but I WILL name check everyone who guesses right in a future blog, and if I have your email address, I will contact you personally to allow you to commiserate with me ;). I'll keep you updated too as treatment goes on, so that you can keep track of your success or otherwise in the betting stakes.

Over to you now. C'mon folks, dig deep while I desperately try to resist shedding, and lets see if we can make something positive out of this negative (for me, anyway) and maybe push my total raised over the £9K mark before it all starts to drop out ...

the day nothing (much) happened ...

I'm not sure what to say about today's "non-appointment" with my haematologist. It was billed as the appointment where I'd learn my final diagnosis, where the views of the Professor in Liverpool would have been canvassed, and a final plan of attack on my cancer would be outlined. There is still a little doubt over quite what my cancer is, so the second opinion was being awaited with keen interest: today was going to resolve this and clarify for Donna and me just what to expect.

But ... the second opinion is still not back! Dr Tueger was very apologetic, explaining that the Prof has been away and only got back yesterday, and as she is the go-to second opinion girl for all of the North West of England, my case wasn't necessarily at the top of the pile ... so, despite the fact that Dr Tueger even left the office to call through to see if she'd had a chance to look at my biopsy yet (she hadn't), we're still in a sort of mini-holding pattern for now. 

So the appointment deteriorated into a bit of a farce, with plans being outlined for treatment, then changed, then re-instated. Dr Tueger and his nurse, Dee, seesawed over what should happen next, with me pitching in, saying I was ready to roll on the 31st, and I'd built my schedule around that, including hoping to attend a 3-day workshop in one of the non-treatment weeks in April, so delaying the start of treatment would be inconvenient (I'm not exactly shy about saying my bit with medics, really). 

In the end, we agreed that, for now, we go ahead with the 31st as the target date for starting treatment, with the proviso that should the Prof in Liverpool come back with a different finding to Hodgkin's lymphoma, then this might need re-thinking. So Donna and I slipped off to a side room with Nurse Dee, who explained more about Hodgkin's to us, and about ABVD, the chemo cocktail I expect to become my medicinal tipple-of-choice over the coming months, and its possible side effects. Lots to take in and take away to read, but while the side effects are not to be looked forward to, there do seem to be drugs that can be taken to counteract these, so really it is all about suck-it-and-see to determine just how I respond to the intense poisons that I have to take into my body over the coming months. 

And, me being me, of course one of my questions was about whether or not I would be able keep running through my chemo. I was delighted when Dee told me that as I was running regularly now, there really was no reason why I shouldn't keep going, but that I should listen to my body, and if it said rest for a while, then I should rest for a while! Here's hoping I do, but also that my body will let me keep on running.

Despite the semi-chaos and indecisiveness of the appointment though, I came away quite positive overall and keen to get this treatment up and running ... bring it on. 

Another highlight of today was meeting Nurse Dee. As with Nurse Laura last week, she was a joy to speak to, knowledgeable and sure-footed in her handling of all our questions.  She and Laura are great communicators, with good senses of humour and they instil a great sense of confidence in them and how they will care for me going forward. Now that is a wonderful skill and I look forward to working with them over the coming months. Wish me luck ...

and BREATHE ...

It's amazing just  how stressful "knowing, but not knowing" can be ... waiting for that second shoe to drop, holding yourself ready but unsure what to expect when it does. That's what this last week has been like for Donna (Mrs 365er) and me, though, as I guess is often the case, neither of us really verbalised this fully,  or maybe were even fully aware of just how tense we were feeling, waiting for Thursday's appointment with the nice Mr Haematologist.

You see, we knew I had cancer again. But we didn't know what type it was, how extensive it might be, or what treatment might entail. We had just enough information to be able to worry, and, as is only human, to start imagining the whole gamut of possibilities. And while we spoke a little about our worries, neither of us were able to satisfactorily reassure the other that it would be okay; that it wouldn't be so bad ... because we just didn't know.

I was trying to be upbeat and positive for Donna, hanging on to the "we found it early, and I've got absolutely NO symptoms" mantra, which has certainly been helping me over the past week, but I know that while she wanted to "hear" that, Donna's thoughts, as were mine at times, were running riot with "what ifs". Sleep was possible, but early wakening for both of us has become the norm - for me, that really is the norm, I'm one of those awful morning people, but for Donna, seeing 5.30 am was not welcome. She told me that her sleep was fine, and her dreams were all food-based (courtesy of watching Australian MasterChef on Watch TV, boy, there is a heck of a lot of that to follow ...), but that once she opened her eyes, all she could think about was me and my cancer, and her fears about this - not a nice state to wake up to at all.

So come Wednesday evening, the day before the appointment, I think we were both a lot more tense that either of us were acknowledging. Then the doorbell went, and there was John, one of our neighbours, with a bottle of wine. Handing it to me, he told me it was "to help you sleep tonight". What a lovely gesture ... and how ungrateful of me to then proceed to talk John into coming out to the pub with me later that evening for a couple of St Patrick's Day Guinnesses as an alternative solution to the sleep problem! He fell for it ... and I even got to keep the wine! *GRINS*

But even the power of Guinness wasn't quite enough, and once again, morning came very early on Thursday. As my appointment was for 11 am, I decided to go to the gym and get a few miles running in as a way of distracting me from thinking about the appointment but even that didn't work really, and after a pathetic mile's run, I headed for the steam room and then home to wait. And while I was off doing my own distracting, poor Donna was at home, worrying just a little bit more ...

So when we finally sat in front of Dr Tueger (pronounced Tweeger), the nice Mr Haematologist, just before 11 am (yes, I did say just before our actual appointment time ... the service has been excellent at our hospital!), I think we were both wound up like elastic bands, waiting for the definitive diagnosis and plan for what would happen next. He announced that as he still hadn't had the second opinion on my biopsy back yet (bugger, it's been 9 days since it was sent, c'mon Liverpool, get a move on!), he couldn't be 100% in his diagnosis, but ... based on the information he had, and his examinaton of me ... as my lump basically walked, talked and looked  like a Hodgkin's lymphoma to him, he was willing to say that he was 90% confident that it was Hodgkin's lymphoma!

But it was the next thing he said that made me realise just how tense we had been ... when he told us that the CT scan (head to pelvis) showed that there "are no other growths anywhere else in your body", the relief that washed over both Donna and I was absolutely palpable. I know I felt my eyes tingle in relief, but Donna just let the tears flow at that point. This was BIG: he went on "it looks to me like you have a Stage 1 Hodgkin's, and I'd even say that, as we've got it so early, it could even be classified as an early Stage 1A, because you have no symptoms. If I was going to have to have cancer, this is the one I'd choose!"

Funnily enough, that's what my last oncologist said about my first cancer - a malignant soft tissue sarcoma, that was excised quickly and from which I recovered very quickly! It seems that there may be a short list of "better" cancers to get in the minds of these medical types, and I've managed to get two of 'em ... for the record, it is my intention to stop after this one, honest!

Dr Tueger went on to tell us that treatment would involve chemotherapy, using a drug cocktail called ABVD, and possibly radiotherapy after that, though given how early this was caught, radiotherapy might not be required. He wants to meet me next Wednesday (March 24th) to finalise the details (and finally confirm the diagnosis, as the 2nd opinion should be back by then), but he is planning then to start my chemotherapy treatment on March 31st. He thinks I'll require just three cycles of chemo (usually four to six are required, I think he said, but again, because this has been caught early, he's looking only at three), and each cycle will involve going to my local hospital (a 10 minute walk away!) for the day to receive my ABVD cocktail of drugs on the 1st and 15th day of the monthly cycle. There are likely to be some side effects, but these can be managed, though he thought it might be best if I took time off work for at least the first cycle to see how I responded or was effected. I'd expected that I would need some time off, but as I work for myself and don't have the luxury of being able to be signed off and have supported sick leave, I am hoping I'll be able to get back to at least light work duties over the course of treatment, but if not, I'll cope, believe me ... the priority now is getting this thing treated and getting well again.

There were a few more things to discuss and arrange, but when we left the consultation with Dr Tueger, I know we both felt a lot lighter ... we weren't ignoring that I still have cancer and I do need to go through a fairly powerful course of treatment, but knowing that my cancer is only in the one location (my neck) and that we appear to have caught it really early, really did make an enormous difference to how we had been feeling about this.

But as we walked away, knowing full well that there are still hurdles to overcome, it did feel that after a long, tense week, we were able to breathe again!

Last time I had cancer ...

It all happened so fast, really. Not the build-up, that took months and months, waiting for them to do more tests to explain what the lump on my arm was. But once they'd identified it as a tumour, it was action stations: diagnosed on Wednesday, lump-no-more by lunchtime Thursday, then radiotherapy, and all was well with the world.

The speed of it all didn't stop us worrying though, because being told you have cancer has that effect, really: you worry, plain and simple.

But the treatment was very bearable, and, having been told it would leave me feeling tired, I was a good patient, and took 2 months off work to have the treatment ... and luckily enough, I felt fine throughout. I even managed to go to the gym most days before my drive over to the Christie for my treatment every morning.

So the last time I had cancer, after the initial shock and worry, luckily, things went really quite smoothly. I used that time off to chill, and some good things came out of it ...

I got fitter than I'd been for a long, long time, preparing me ultimately for my 365challenge. And I gained in many other ways too.

A friend, Graeme, recommended that I should watch "The Wire", so I bought the box-set of Season One, and by the time I went back to work, I was chomping on the bit for the box-set of Season Four to be released, having devoured every episode in between. I'd never have watched it if I hadn't found myself with the time to do so, and if I hadn't, I'd have missed one of the greatest television series of all time!

Another friend, Dave, suggested I read "Dissolution", by C.J. Sansom, the first in the Shardlake series, set in the time of the Reformation. Outcome: read all four in the series. Loved them. And "Any Human Heart", by William Boyd, the stunning, disjointed autobiography of Logan Gonzago Mountstuart. Huw suggested that one, and it was absolutely absorbing.

I read other wonderful books, watched some great movies, and generally de-stressed from work, and honestly, as the treatment progressed, I felt more and more assured that that cancer was history. So last time I had cancer, believe it or not, the experience wasn't totally horrendous, but I actually came out of it having had some real positives.

It would be great to have more of the same this time ... so, any recommendations to make that more likely to be the case? Because I'm going into this looking for the positives from the experience ...

Some days are better than others, but today wasn't one of them ...

Today I learned that I have cancer again.

The type has yet to be finally and definitively identified and labelled, but it IS cancer, and I am going to have to have another course of treatment, whatever the final label might be. And, sod's law, the likelihood that this cancer is in any way linked with my previous cancer is just about nil. So lucky old Colin's only gone and gotten himself a second, different type of cancer 'cos beating one cancer just wasn't enough for him. The Pratt.

The ENT consultant today (this new lump is on my neck) didn't want to speculate too much because all of the test results are not back and so he didn't want to misinform me, but he did venture that he thinks it's most likely Hodgkin's Lymphoma, and, as he put it, if I had to have cancer there, this was about the best one to get, as the outcomes for treatment are pretty damn good! I'll hang on to that, because positive messages, wherever they can be found, are going to part of my armoury again as I take on this next fight.

But there are different stages to Hodgkin's and until all the results of the CT and MRI scans I've had over the past week are in, its not possible to say just what stage this is at or quite how it will be treated. My next step is to meet with the Consultant Haematologist (possibly not until next Thursday!), who should then have those answers, and hear from him just what treatment I have to look forward to. It could be radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or a combination, I believe, and the goal is to shrink the growth and kill it, rather than excise it, as they were able to do with my old adversary, my soft tissue sarcoma.

However, as I said, I need to hang onto the positives, and those are that this WILL respond to treatment ... so, whatever that might have to be, I'm ready and willing to have it ... as soon as you like, nice Mr Haematologist man ... please!

One thing that I do know is that, as a result of my 365challenge for Cancer Research UK (all that fund-raising better bloody well pay off now, CRUK; a fix wouldn't half be welcome right now!), I am probably now fitter than I've been in many years, so that is only going to help me in this fight. So that, clearly, is another positive to hold on to.

And so, oddly enough, is the fact that I have had a tumour before! Because, had I not had an unexplained lump on my arm three years ago that turned out to be that tumour, I might not have looked to have had this lump investigated anything like as quickly as I have had this time. And who knows what that might have meant over time? Getting stuck in now is certainly the best thing I could have done, I'm sure, and without my "prior knowledge", I'm unlikely to have done so.

So let's hope that we've spotted and caught this one good and early, but whatever the case might ultimately be, the fact is that treatment is on the horizon, and I am already looking beyond that horizon to the day I write another blog update to say that yet again, Colin has kicked cancer's arse!

I know I'll be fighting this day by day, but I also know that I have all of you lot out there cheering me on and offering me the amazing support I've enjoyed from you once before, all over again. And believe me, that means a hell of a lot to me, so ... from the bottom of my heart, and in advance ... my heartfelt thanks. C'mon, let's kick cancer one more time for Colin!