My Year with Cancer

Paul Quinn Robert

Description

Be moved! Be inspired! Be encouraged!Here is the true and honest story of a man who out of the blue fell victim to oesophageal cancer in mid-life and fought back. He takes the reader from his incomprehension at the moment of diagnosis, to his bewilderment, then acceptance, the battle and finally the all-clear. He does not spare us the disappointments, the pain, the loneliness, the many difficulties in coping with endless hospital appointments and a dazzling array of treatments and medicaments. But there is also humour and light-heartedness and the courage which propelled him forward in the face of dismaying odds.He talks about coping with life afterwards with only a fraction of the stomach he had before and a new oesophagus fashioned out of the rest of it: the nausea, the fatigue, the discomfort, teething problems, new surgical interventions ... a journey none of us would willingly undertake but despatched here with humour and determination.He pays tribute to friends and members of his family who gave him support and particularly to members of the many medical teams - nurses, doctors, consultants, surgeons, counsellors - from whom he received expertise, TLC and encouragement. On the other hand, he does not disguise what he sees as failures in his treatment at the hands of the NHS.This book will inform, stimulate, hearten and move you to action. The story is lightly told, the style easy on the eye. In short, it's a great read!

Sujets

• Oncology

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 10 mars 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782284123
• Langue: English

Extrait

My Year with Cancer




Robert Paul Quinn
Copyright

First Published in 2016 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing My Year with Cancer
Copyright © 20 16 Robert Paul Quinn Paul Quinn has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Mobi eISBN: 9781782284109 ePub eISBN: 9781782284123 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782284147 Paperback ISBN: 9781782284086 Pneuma Springs Publishing E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
Dedication

To

Shirley and Ange

My Rocks
Reviews
I could not put it down. I didn't expect a book about cancer to make me laugh out loud, but it did. The humour lightened the mood while still telling the story. The author has managed to find the right balance between conveying their personal experience/opinions while remaining non-judgemental. The author is very open and honest and takes you on his personal journey to beat cancer. It provides an in-depth look at the good, bad and ugly side of cancer. There are some helpful and handy tips that some may find useful when trying to come to terms with fighting the disease. An excellent read with a dash of humour thrown in for good measure makes this an essential book for everyone who is either going through cancer treatment and/or friends/family who want to provide the right support for them.
David T
A very powerful account of one man's journey through the complex NHS system after being diagnosed with cancer. Never losing his sense of humour throughout, you will find this book both fascinating and insightful. The author is very relatable which kept me hooked right from the start.
Shirley Harvey
This book is a honest account of one man's journey from diagnosis and subsequent recovery from cancer. Don't be put off by the title, it's not all gloom and doom. I had thought it was going to be sad and serious but this is not the case. It's honest, funny and informative.
Mary Boyle
Table of Contents

Diagnosis - and the Dead Parrot sketch!
About Me
Initial Thoughts
The Plan
Starting The Procedures
Emotional Stuff
Family and Friends
Chemotherapy
The NHS
The Operation - Oesophagectomy
It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want To
Personal Advice
My Wish list
Personal Pledge — Charity Nomination
Chapter One: Diagnosis – and the Dead Parrot Sketch!
I remember being wheeled into the recovery area of the endoscopic unit at QEQM hospital, in Margate, in a kind of ‘where am I?’ daze. Looking around, I noticed I was the only person in there, despite there being about ten bays. After ten minutes or so (I think), the doctor who carried out my procedure came to see me with a couple of nurses. At this point I should like to quote exactly what the doctor said, but, either owing to the effects of the sedative’s wearing off or because of the impact of the sentence, I cannot exactly remember, but it was, ‘We have found a malignant tumour on your oesophagus.’ There was then some arm-rubbing (by them, not me); even I didn’t feel prone to making any moves at that time! I was then left alone to absorb this information.

After about five minutes, a lady was wheeled into the room, placed in a bay and had the curtains pulled round her. Then another man was brought in and was put in a bay a couple down from me; a nurse was discussing something with him, but I couldn’t quite focus on the context. The next thing I heard was the most almighty rumbling wet fart that I have heard in ages, coming from the lady’s enclosed bay. This was one of those bottom-belches that any bloke on a Saturday afternoon down the pub with his friends would have been given supreme bragging-rights over. The fact that the nurses had enclosed the woman in curtains only added to the dramatic effect, as the curtains rippled like bed sheets on the washing line on a day with weather predicted by Michael Fish! I looked to my right to see the reaction to this event from the nurse and the other chap: I suppose looking for some light relief from my personal situation. However, it appeared as if I had imagined it. ‘Hang on,’ I thought, if I imagined that, perhaps I also imagined the conversation with the doctor … Bloody sedative making me imagine things. I was just attempting to make my mind agree with this new set of information when the lady’s curtains again fluttered like a plastic shopping-bag caught in a tree during a hurricane. This one was even louder, but still not a single reaction from the guy and the nurse, let alone an apology from the woman. ‘I know what’s going on,’ I thought. ‘I’m in a bloody Monty Python sketch.’ I was just waiting for a load of blokes dressed in cardinal’s cassocks to come in a chorus-line dancing, telling me that no-one expects the Spanish inquisition! The simple fact was that any kind of endoscopy/colonoscopy procedure has the unfortunate side-effect of making you fart, as I suddenly remembered from the pre-procedure literature and later discovered myself, once the sedative had fully worn off. The bloke in the next bay was either as shocked as myself but too embarrassed to react, as we blokes do by guffawing to each other, as the nurse was talking to him, or he himself was also receiving some not too pleasant news. I personally hope it was the first.

This sudden realisation brought me back to the little bay I was in and my own set of circumstances. Now I know the doctor said a malignant tumour, and I’m pretty bright, so I know that’s not good at all, and the big C word is spinning in my head: but did she use it? Besides, surely there must be a test that gets done to ensure the diagnosis before that C word is used, isn’t there? I’ve seen the dramas/films: you have a test or procedure, then go back to the docs two weeks later and leave their office either dancing around like a lucky git whose six numbers have come up, or with a face that looks like it’s been slapped with a wet fish because a totally different set of numbers have given a totally different result. Either way, surely they couldn’t know immediately, could they? Later on, I realised why it was a doctor doing the test and not a nurse. My GP had suspected cancer but obviously had not said anything to me until the endoscopy had been done and his suspicions were confirmed. The doctor who performed the procedure was, I believe, a specialist in this area and knew exactly what she was looking at, so there really wasn’t much doubt. I had spoken to her briefly prior to the endoscopy, and she had been talking about the fact that the referral was a partial one and she would like to do some blood-tests and possibly a colonoscopy as well.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘Spin the table round after the first check?!’ Back in my Monty Python sketch, a nurse came to speak to me to check how the information was sinking in, and I tentatively asked the big question that hadn’t been directly answered up until now.
‘So is it cancer, then?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid,’ she replied.
‘Bugger,’ I thought.
Chapter Two: About Me
My name is Robert Paul Quinn, but the Robert was a kind of family heirloom, and as both my father and I used to crap ourselves when my mother screamed ‘Robert!’, I soon became Paul to avoid any confusion over blame. This simple fact was to become quite a bugbear of mine during the present period of my life: as anyone knows, the ‘computer’ has your full correct name, so all letters and bookings are made thus. Therefore all nurses/doctors/receptionists will call you by your first ‘correct’ name, as obviously ‘the computer is never wrong’! Now if my treatment had been confined to one hospital, the request from me to be called Paul would eventually have been accepted, and I should not have heard myself constantly having to repeat the it’s-a–family-heirloom-thing many, many times. Unfortunately, my treatment was destined to be spread across many different hospitals, dealt with by many staff, and I ended up giving in to the fact that, despite my asking, I was going to be called Robert, and, with a slight wince every time it was said, I accepted this.

I was born in sunny Paisley in September 1965, the first child of Robert Francis Quinn and Agnes Harvey Quinn. My father was a professional musician, and my mother was a mum. When I was about a year old, my father left the music scene of Glasgow and headed south, which brought him to the Beacholme holiday camp in Cleethorpes, where he spent the next twenty-odd years as leader of the resident band. We settled in; we had an addition: my sister, Shirley Anne Quinn; and that was us. I was quite a bright kid, but with no real ambition or focus (my parents, teachers and probably many friends would call me ‘lazy-minded’!). I settled into my obvious role of class clown and chief pain to all around me. Being the child of someone working on the holiday-camp afforded me lots of access and privileges which I abused with aplomb. The years went by, and I scraped through, and at the age of seventeen I joined the RAF as a policeman - which was a bad move, but hindsight is such an overrated thing. In any case, it fitted in to the great scheme of stumbling from one bad decision to another! I left the RAF some five years later and returned home, to find my father now working in Spain, with my mother and Shirley there with him. This would have been perfect, me living in the family home alone, if I had had the resources to run a three-bedroomed bungalow on the little money I left the RAF with. Well, I bimbled on and over the years travelled much of this fine country, procuring various forms of employment, from kitchen salesman to sanitary-towel-machine