A brave new day

I know what your thinking! Your thinking, wait a minute, didn't he promise that the last entry in this blog, was his last entry - well I am sorry to say, I am back! and sadly so is my cancer.

It is now in two places in my liver.

The doctors have said that its about containing the cancer, not getting rid - but I have been told this in the past, I plan to get rid of it again.

If you belittle the situation, then it doesnt seem such a big deal. Right now, I am trying to see it not as, ITS CANCER...AGAIN but more, Its only cancer, again...

It as taken the 4th time to get cancer to accept that pancreatic cancer will be part of my life, through my life, and that is fine.  By accepting this, does not take the right away to not challenge it's existence. It never get easer, I would say it gets harder, to not just physically take onboard what is happening but also the weight of it mentally.

After a scan and a trip to The London Clinic and then a meeting with my oncologist the conclusion was that there are 2 new tumours on my liver and the next step is to have a Pet scan.

The Pet scan will give a better image and show if the cancer is anywhere else and then the doctors can choose what is the best direction to go for the long term decision.

I will be having the Ablation/Nano-knife technology again. My doctor said that it is acting in a different way to how pancreatic cancer usually acts and in a good way, while many (including myself) say oh another tumour again! it seems the medical professionals are saying, well, only 2 tumours after 3 years of having this and it coming back 3 times is very positive.

I am not sleeping that much, this as nothing to do with worry or stress, but just the usual cancer pain, that only seems to come alive at night when you are trying to sleep, it is now almost 2am.

I have been helping out with the charities which I really enjoy.  I have been helping the Pancreatic Cancer Action charity. PCA  are one of the charities that are trying to get Abraxane (one of the chemo drugs) back on the NHS list after the government has taken some cancer drugs off the available list.

There is an disagreement on how much the cancer drug is and its worth, I feel that the debate for that is between the drug companies and the government, but the actual use of the drug is one of a personal issue and one that i can discuss.

This was me on channel four news:

and here is the article I did for Yorkshire Evening post

Here is the link for the petition, https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/107388 Thank you for all who have signed.

I was introduced to one of the production team of the new cancer research adverts that will be on TV this Christmas, and I may be on this.

So, for now thats the information I have, waiting for results from the Pet scan, and then from that the doctors will know the best direction to go.

As for the other stuff, I will continue to help with the charities as much as I can.

How to wind a vegan up!

After my operation last year, i was told i will now start to eat only small but often, and i do eat often, but i also eat a lot which at least I have got one of those things right.

Now people in my situation hang on to any hope they can get there hands on, and I had heard about this thing that people call "healthy eating" but to be honest Im not really into those faddy ideas and I prefire to stick to lard thank you very much, but when I met this lady in the chemo award and she told me about moving on to a diet that is vegan and with that her tumor had shrunk, me and Rob my partner decided to do the same.

Now i must admit, I can not really call it vegan, as very occasionally we do eat fish and organic chicken for protean, but if I get frustrated by my situation then the best therapy is find a vegan, tell them you are vegan, and then tell them you eat chicken and fish (its like lighting up a touch paper on a firework) and sometimes a right good argument does you the world of good, and due to the lack of meat, they have less energy to argue there point so you can usually win! A vegan on the internet said I had a ugly soul when i purposeless told her this, which I think is a bit strong for eating a bit of chicken but there you go!

So, the future is nut cutlets! and I must admit, I have really enjoying it so far, we have been a bit more adventures with veg so instead of just boiling some carrots we have added loads of flavorings to the veg (when i say flavorings i don't mean 'beef!') and we are both plesently surprised!

But, when we have gone out for food, it has been disappointing, we went to a vegan restaurant and ordered mushroom stroganoff (and when i was ordering it due to my dyslexic head, all i could read was beef stroganoff which had the vegan effect yet again!)

Do you know when your hungry and you want to fool yourself that your enjoying something, so our first mouthful we both said it was nice, but the 2nd we realised it tasted like dishwater, after pouring on a ton of salt and adding high blood preasure to my list of issues i have right now, i could taste it.

We have been to a few vegan/vegi cafes now and some are OK, but only one as been great and that was Prashad in Drighlington, which is an Indian restaurant and was a pleasure to go into a Indian restaurant and pick anything off the menu (the starters are amazing).

While I am on this rant, when you go to other restaurant and look at there vegetarian range, some can be really poor too. When you go to Franky and Benny's and order a vegetarian breakfast its like a normal breakfast without the bacon and saussage! not a vegi burger or vegi saussage in sight.

I have also been having supplements which I will talk about next time.

If you want any reference on why the hell I have given up meat, read this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5698784/Being-a-vegetarian-can-cut-your-risk-of-cancer-by-a-half-claim-scientists.html

Foods-That-Fight-Cancer

Dietary Fat, Especially From Red Meat, Dairy, Linked To Pancreatic Cancer

Its come back!

This is one post i haven't really wanted to write.

A month or 2 ago i got a call saying that my blood ca-19 had gone up to 90, anything above 30 and they are worried.

I had a CT scan booked, i decided to carry on and still celebrate my birthday at the start of Dec 2013, it was my 40th, and we had planned to go to London.

It was a great weekend, the hotel was lovely, and i went to all the good markets of London, and ate a lot of street food, I loved it.

But when i got back to the hotel, i didn't feel that well, i thought it was due to a lack of sleep so with that i went to bed but woke up thirsty around 2am.

I was not sure if i was thirsty or felt sick, I went to the toilet and wanted to go,  my temperature suddenly rose and i fell off the toilet, i won't go into graphic accounts of the evening but my stools where foul smelling and bloody, i collapsed.

I awoke just as quickly and felt my temperature come back, with that the adrenalin kicked in and i stud up and called for an ambulance.

I spent 3 days in hospital, it looked like this was down to a burst blood veslal and had nothing to do with the cancer, but it had shown a 1.5cm mark on my liver.

I got back home and had another CT scan in Leeds, and this showed the same.

So, here we go again! i start chemo next week, 14th Jan, to say I'm nervous is an understatement.

But i will keep a recorded on how it all goes on here.