Writing my blog whilst being diagnosed with cancer and updating it throughout the treatment process has been cathartic and challenging. Revisiting those painful experiences was never easy. It also caused some relationships to be stretched as I determined to navigate my journey back to ‘normality’. For no matter how personal our journey might be, others (particularly those who care the most) also suffer.

I write this today, some two years on from that frightening time when I wandered into that unwelcoming doctor’s surgery. Since I was no longer ‘registered there’ due to a recent change of address, they initially tried to send me away. Knowing now what I did not know then, my stubbornness probably saved my life.  If I had waited to fill out the forms and be allocated a different GP, my stage 3 throat cancer would undoubtedly have got worse. Moving half a mile to a new postcode during lockdown could easily have killed me. Such are the small margins between stage 3 and stage 4, surgery or non surgery, life and death, success and failure, happiness and despair. Am I being over dramatic? If you have watched the movie, Sliding Doors, you know exactly what I mean. 

TWO YEARS ON

Today marks something of a landmark for me, though far less spectacular than many of those previous highs I have written about. 

Gone are the ‘get well soon’ cards and the hundreds of ‘thumbs up’ on my facebook posts. Gone are the bottles of morphine, purple syringes and stacks of liquid food supplements. Gone too are the cooling fans, sick buckets and pre-prepared Post-It notes for when my voice packed up on those excruciating Zoom calls. And long gone are the hopes of a reconciliation with a partner who walked out on the day of diagnosis. 

All those daily reminders of a cancer journey through lockdown, alone, and on a boat are now a thing of the past.

The heatwave has also gone. Wearing a mask, incessantly washing my hands and trying to keep cool in the cabin of a metal ship I call home, has been replaced by one of the longest, wettest, coldest winters in our lifetime. Life is returning to ‘normal’ as my health returns to that of a somewhat ageing but otherwise fit and active 59 year old – thank God!

The physical recovery from throat cancer has been painful. I would be doing an injustice to those who go through this journey if I were to suggest otherwise. The oncologist and her team were right when they said it was going to be tough. It hurts like hell and the suffering lasts for many long, tired and frustrating months – in my case around 18.

Having reached the Year 2 milestone, I have little more than a croaky voice and occasional dry mouth to show for these pains. The scar of the feeding tube into the stomach resembles little more than a cute, smiling emoji nestled on a re-inflated, ever-expanding belly. The blistered neck that wept its yellow puss shows no sign of the disgusting, hideous sight it once was. 

Recovery has seen a gradual return to strength, hope and happiness. I regularly considered myself ‘better’, only to discover that in fact I was simply a fraction ‘better’ than the day before. In mathematical terms, I travelled just 0.3% of the journey each day.

This reminds me of the lecture I once gave, talking about the Holy Grail of marketing: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. My margins of improvement were tiny, but still noticeable. Even if one day was much like the next, there were tangible improvements from one week to the next – though two doses of Covid did not help, and there has been a long-lasting impact on my levels of energy as they are finally getting back to where they used to be.

SCARS

We who recover from cancer carry a burden in our hearts and minds that nobody will see. The guilt that we survived when others didn’t, is also real, though humbling and hopefully diminishing with time. Their memory is never far away. Not yet, anyway. 

But then there is the fear. Only today did I learn I am actually in ‘remission’ as opposed to ‘cured’. I was always a little nervous that my symptoms might return. Even worse, secondary cancers might develop. 

The term ‘remission’ is chilling. It is a word that shouts of a life only temporarily mine to live. I need to do so. Fully. Now. In case the cancer returns.

But, you know what, it makes no bloody difference what I think. Life will deal the cards I was meant to have regardless of whether I am in remission or cured. It will be what it will be.

Another aspect of being a ‘cancer survivor’ is the membership card I now have for this special club. Not quite as ‘official’ as that curious handshake of people from a certain ‘cult’, or that nod from one Hells Angel to another as they respectfully pass each other on the highway.

No. Our ‘membership’ is more subtle and often goes unsaid. It’s one reserved for those who have come through shit and know life is simultaneously precious and precarious. 

It’s an inner sense of achievement tinged with a hint of fear. A sense of accomplishment awash with a degree of sadness as we hear tales of those who failed to beat the odds. To them, I bow my head and thank them for taking my hit for me. 

For I have this rather difficult to explain belief, that life is finite and therefore so is good and bad. It evens itself out over our lifetime and everyone gets an equal opportunity on earth to live their best life. It’s our choice to concentrate on the positive or focus on the negative.

One person’s ‘bad luck’ is to others a motivation to make change happen. Life is binary. It’s a finite sequence of decisions. Yes or no. On or off. Left or right. So much depends on the risks we take, the positive mental attitude we cultivate, the resilience we developed over a lifetime of making good and bad decisions. 

We all have a similar mental budget, metaphorically speaking, we just choose to spend it differently.

The past two years have seen a whirlwind of hospital appointments punctuated by endless Covid testing. I’ve stumbled along walks, taken many risky bike rides and spent hours washing my hands. It has been a time of fear. But now, as I pick up the pieces of a weary mind and devastated career, reality is striking home. 

PAINFUL REALITIES

The metaphorical crutches are off and bills need to be paid. A recent interview I gave for Sky News and the Macmillan charity about dealing with cancer through the cost of living crisis, was real. 

Imagine being in a coma for 2 years, with your eyes wide open, then waking up to this shit show. 

The question might have seemed a little harsh a few months ago, but seems entirely apposite now:

“What is it like to recover when the world around me is in something of a meltdown?”

It’s a fair question and one that focuses my mind on this next battle. 

Brexit, Truss, the war in Ukraine, energy price rises, inflation and hikes in the interest rates impact on most of us. Now the widespread redundancies in my homeground sector of technology, are a very personal reality. Ironically, Artificial Intelligence could accelerate the collapse in IT and many other sectors. I no longer have any excuse to ignore these very real challenges. Sympathy only goes so far.

Using my ‘downtime’ to write a book about a kid who was unhyphenated at birth and made it big, only to be smacked in the face by cancer (first draft is almost finished) and more recently learn as much as I can about artificial intelligence, machine learning and other related developments that are rapidly affecting the world I am returning to, this current phase has just got a whole lot tougher. Writing this brings it home to me how fragile the economy is right now as more banks collapse and crypto looms high on the horizon.

I left home and school on my 16th birthday… amid miner’s strikes, blackouts, 16% interest rates, riots and high unemployment. It feels to me, right now, that we are heading back to those days. Perhaps worse (quantitative easing has masked the real depth of the problem). 

As a previous Teaching Fellow, I have pondered a return to education. But Higher Education in the UK, previously one of the UK’s biggest exports, is entering a period of utter and total collapse. It needs to confront the perfect storm of highly efficient remote learning, increased competition from ‘cheaper’ international providers offering more and better degrees in English and a severely reduced research budget decimated by Brexit.

Artificial Intelligence definitely affects jobs. It is already happening and not least within my field of sales and marketing technology. ChatGPT has a lot to answer for … and I’m not just being ironic. What used to take a journalist, PR or copywriting professional half a day to construct, publish and measure is now being achieved in minutes. And the really scary thing – just like trains and supermarkets and classrooms and petrol stations – is that professional content creation is becoming a ‘self-service’ DIY activity. Experts are no longer required. 

It’s no longer the exclusive domain of the lawyer, accountant, graphic designer, coder, marketing exec. Why pay them when you can do it yourself? Heads will roll as industries find the perfect excuse to let their people go (Vodafone announced 11,000 job cuts at the very moment I wrote that sentence!). 

Onwards and upwards …

But I want to end this second anniversary message on a high. 

There’s been a great deal of happiness on this road to recovery. I admit, I’ve become extremely selfish. When time, health and money afforded, I travelled aplenty. I enjoyed many wonderful times with my family, especially my granddaughters who, through the marvel of video calls, have learnt to recognise their croaky grandad on those days and weeks we are apart. 

I’ve been to countless gigs, including those featuring my two very talented (they get it from their mother) sons, something I feared would never happen again. And I’ve been hosted and fed and spoiled by too many people to mention… but you know who you are! 

It was wonderful to attend my daughter’s wedding and be reunited with cherished family and friends. Even my ex mother-in-law who gave me ‘a good talking to’ just before she recently passed away at 97 years of age. That was special. Especially when she hugged me and called me ‘Naddy’. She really did have a soft spot for a rogue, a box I have ticked many times with careless abandon. 

As we get older, we all attend more funerals. It’s an irrefutable fact. In the past two years it is quite extraordinary how many very close family and friends have passed away. Shocking. Surely that’s not normal even for someone of my age. But funerals are now very different.  They now feel like an opportunity to celebrate a life lived. Something I no longer take for granted. 

Being diagnosed with cancer is no longer a death sentence. At least, for some of us. 

So to Paul from Facebook and the guy at The Plumbers Arms and the lady’s brother who flagged me down whilst out walking along Strand on the Green just the other day … and others who have read my blog and messaged me (and anyone else who may be affected by the same throat cancer I had) the ability to eat ‘normally’ does come back.

One single grain of black pepper used to leave me in indescribable pain. An innocent moussaka left me in tears whilst I desperately tried to drink gallons of water to counter the effects of the spices (yep, it’s hardly got any!!). But now it’s fine. Certain foods still do hurt, especially if consumed later in the evening and too much vino can leave me so croaky I avoid talking to strangers and young children after sundown. On the plus side, I sound scarily like Leonard Cohen on the karaoke!

The treatments are remarkable… and the science is getting better by the day. Every single visit to Charing Cross Hospital has been well managed, polite, fun and endearing. It’s as if I wear a badge that says, “Treat him with care … he’s special”. And of course Macmillan have been there for me too.

Hope really does spring eternal so if anyone is heading into a cancer treatment, I’d say “back yourself”. 

To coin a phrase from a friend in business: “‘Net, Net’, being diagnosed with cancer has not all been so bad. Yet in the world at large, sadly there are worse things to come.” 

Thanks for listening!

Written Monday 10th April to Tuesday 16th May 2023

Somewhere in Dorset, Yorkshire and London.

Read my full blog: http://www.nadio.co.uk