As if the past 6 months haven't been hard enough on Donna (Mrs 365er) and I, just as you think you are out of the woods, cancer takes a parting shot, just to make sure that you don't fall into the trap of taking it for granted. It can be a cruel beast, that's for sure.
I'd come through my chemotherapy and been given the wonderful news that my Hodgkins lymphoma was in "complete remission. But my consultant just wanted to make sure ... it being best practice and all, he arranged for me the special treat of 3 weeks of radiotherapy, just to make sure that we'd killed off the little nasties once and for all.
Now radiotherapy isn't exactly a walk in the park. For one thing, a 3 week course means just that, 3 weeks, Monday to Friday, 15 days, of traveling up the M53 motorway to the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology on the Wirral to be zapped by a powerful ray gun that leaves your skin looking like you've got extreme sunburn.
It starts with you getting fitted with a partial body mould. In my case, the mould was from just below my nose to halfway down my chest. Then, they use this to pin you onto the treatment bed every time. This ensures that you don't move during treatment, which is very carefully targeted at a very specific area identified in scans as Ground Zero for the lymphoma. Once on the treatment bed, I would get subjected to two powerful blasts of this radiotherapy ray gun, treating the right hand side of my neck from the front and the back.
The result: what the staff call the "Clatterbridge tan" - pretty serious sunburn, but just to that defined area of my neck. To say that it felt pretty hot and uncomfortable is putting it mildly, and I was slathering on aqueous creams 3 or 4 times a day to ease the burn and swigging their special mouthwash to ease the mouth ulcers that were trying to take hold. And once treatment is over, that's not the end of it, as you keep "cooking" for a few more weeks, and even now, 10 days post my final zapping, that side of my neck is still warm to the touch.
But there's more! Because I was having the radiotherapy to my neck, I wasn't allowed to wet shave, because if I nicked myself, they couldn't give me treatment to an open wound. I decided therefore to let my beard grow out, rather than get an electric razor for just a few weeks. Of course, once I'd decided on that course of action, they then told me that I would have to refrain from shaving the right side of my neck and face for several weeks after treatment finished, as the skin would still be fragile. Fair enough, I thought, I haven't had a full beard for 25 years, let's give it another run and see how it goes. And full beard it quickly became, a multicoloured entity, stretching from my cheekbones to my Adam's apple. So far, so good.
But then, a couple of days before my final radiotherapy treatment, I noticed a small bare patch appear on my chin. By the end of that day ... the patch had grown. It stretched from my mouth across to my ear, down across my jaw and clear across the right side of my throat. Gone. Leaving a patch smooth as the proverbial baby's bottom (and just as red!). That afternoon, a six-year-old client verbalised what everyone else had been wondering: "Mum, why has Colin only got half a beard?" Something had to be done, not least because Donna and I were heading out to an expensive restaurant the next evening with friends to celebrate the end of my treatment and my "complete remission" - I couldn't go out with only half a beard now, could I?
And so, cancer made it's final assault on me, attacking my dignity one last time. Readers, if you are of a nervous disposition, click away now, for below, I present pictorial evidence of the devastation this condition has wrought. It is a cruel and harsh disease, but I have fought it twice now, and defeated it twice. Though it has thrown one final assault my way, I have responded in the only way I know how: head on, kicking back hard, taking positive action. As if it wasn't bad enough, given that the radiotherapy has left my skin ultra-sensitive to the sun, I have had to take steps to protect myself further when I leave the safety of my home, and though this has added further to the indignity that this condition has tried to reign down on me, I have not allowed it to gain an inch ... I have stepped proudly out of my house with my head held high.
Though people have begun to stare ...
I'd come through my chemotherapy and been given the wonderful news that my Hodgkins lymphoma was in "complete remission. But my consultant just wanted to make sure ... it being best practice and all, he arranged for me the special treat of 3 weeks of radiotherapy, just to make sure that we'd killed off the little nasties once and for all.
Now radiotherapy isn't exactly a walk in the park. For one thing, a 3 week course means just that, 3 weeks, Monday to Friday, 15 days, of traveling up the M53 motorway to the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology on the Wirral to be zapped by a powerful ray gun that leaves your skin looking like you've got extreme sunburn.
It starts with you getting fitted with a partial body mould. In my case, the mould was from just below my nose to halfway down my chest. Then, they use this to pin you onto the treatment bed every time. This ensures that you don't move during treatment, which is very carefully targeted at a very specific area identified in scans as Ground Zero for the lymphoma. Once on the treatment bed, I would get subjected to two powerful blasts of this radiotherapy ray gun, treating the right hand side of my neck from the front and the back.
The result: what the staff call the "Clatterbridge tan" - pretty serious sunburn, but just to that defined area of my neck. To say that it felt pretty hot and uncomfortable is putting it mildly, and I was slathering on aqueous creams 3 or 4 times a day to ease the burn and swigging their special mouthwash to ease the mouth ulcers that were trying to take hold. And once treatment is over, that's not the end of it, as you keep "cooking" for a few more weeks, and even now, 10 days post my final zapping, that side of my neck is still warm to the touch.
But there's more! Because I was having the radiotherapy to my neck, I wasn't allowed to wet shave, because if I nicked myself, they couldn't give me treatment to an open wound. I decided therefore to let my beard grow out, rather than get an electric razor for just a few weeks. Of course, once I'd decided on that course of action, they then told me that I would have to refrain from shaving the right side of my neck and face for several weeks after treatment finished, as the skin would still be fragile. Fair enough, I thought, I haven't had a full beard for 25 years, let's give it another run and see how it goes. And full beard it quickly became, a multicoloured entity, stretching from my cheekbones to my Adam's apple. So far, so good.
But then, a couple of days before my final radiotherapy treatment, I noticed a small bare patch appear on my chin. By the end of that day ... the patch had grown. It stretched from my mouth across to my ear, down across my jaw and clear across the right side of my throat. Gone. Leaving a patch smooth as the proverbial baby's bottom (and just as red!). That afternoon, a six-year-old client verbalised what everyone else had been wondering: "Mum, why has Colin only got half a beard?" Something had to be done, not least because Donna and I were heading out to an expensive restaurant the next evening with friends to celebrate the end of my treatment and my "complete remission" - I couldn't go out with only half a beard now, could I?
And so, cancer made it's final assault on me, attacking my dignity one last time. Readers, if you are of a nervous disposition, click away now, for below, I present pictorial evidence of the devastation this condition has wrought. It is a cruel and harsh disease, but I have fought it twice now, and defeated it twice. Though it has thrown one final assault my way, I have responded in the only way I know how: head on, kicking back hard, taking positive action. As if it wasn't bad enough, given that the radiotherapy has left my skin ultra-sensitive to the sun, I have had to take steps to protect myself further when I leave the safety of my home, and though this has added further to the indignity that this condition has tried to reign down on me, I have not allowed it to gain an inch ... I have stepped proudly out of my house with my head held high.
Though people have begun to stare ...
And my outdoor guise ... it gives me something of an edge, don't you think ... just hand me a guitar, call me Waylon and stand back, 'mam ...
I have to confess ... I think I'm starting to like it :D
