On February 12th I went into hospital to have the right testicle removed. This was the start of my treatment. I had my operation on Friday 13th, I was discharged on Valentines day and still took Frances out for a meal in the evening with walking stick and all.
A month later I was taken in to hospital to have the first of what was going to be initially four sessions of chemotherapy each lasting for 3 days. However I was told that the tumour was worse than they first thought and so I had to have a minimum of four sessions at five days each. I had the drip fed into me at about 4.00 p.m. This was it, there was no turning back now.
The Saturday arrived and I could finally go home, I had to go back to the hospital each week for a check up and a booster injection.
After my second booster injection, I was able to literally pull my hair from my head, so that evening I decided that I wanted my hair shaved off, as I didn't want it all to fall out gradually. We tried absolutely everything to get the hair removed, from clippers to ladies razors, it took a mammoth three hours to get the majority of it removed.
After my fourth dose of chemotherapy I had to have a CT scan, to check if there was any more cancer anywhere. The results of this was I had to have another two doses at five days each and then more than likely I would have to have a further operation.
I found that after my two further doses of chemotherapy that I did have to have a further operation to remove what could be cancer from my abdomen.
Two days before my operation I had to go back and just have few tests to make sure that I was well enough to have the surgery, bearing in mind I had had a large amount of chemotherapy pumped into me.
I went in for my operation, the day before I was given two very strong laxatives to clear my stomach.
The day arrived when I was having my surgery, I went to the theatre at 8.00 a.m. and was back on the ward at approximately 2pm Of course I don't remember this as I was asleep. The day after the surgery the nurses tried to stand me up, but it hurt like hell. You don't realise how much you use your stomach until you can't.
Four days passed without any food, of course I was able to drink a day or so after surgery. I swallowed the food and it felt like a knife digging into my stomach. This happened with everything that I ate. I found that ice cream and soup was the easiest to swallow.
Four more weeks passed that I spent at home recovering, when on 10th November 1998 I was told that the substance that they had removed was in fact scar tissue. This meant that there was no more cancer inside me.
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