Update 1

Firstly I would like to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read any amount of this website. The response has and continues to be genuinely overwhelming. I have heard from friends, relatives, colleagues and been introduced to new people who I would have never otherwise have met or had the chance to speak to. I have re-connected with people I never thought I would have, donations have been made to the charities I mention, and I am so grateful that publishing the website has had a positive effect. Thank you.

The new year didn’t really start as planned. Actually, saying that I had no real plans other than to start a new course of chemotherapy treatment during the second week of January. The last chemotherapy drug that I was having when I initially published this website in early December led to some nasty side effects. For my own safety, that particular treatment had to be stopped, and that decision was made on Christmas Eve. The positives of stopping treatment meant I would be given a few weeks to recover over Christmas and New Year before starting yet another combination of chemotherapy as and when I was physically able to tolerate it again. 

However, that all sounded far too straightforward. Instead, I started suffering with acute pain and was admitted to the Thames Hospice at the end on the first full week of January, days before I was due to start chemotherapy treatment again. Bollocks. The first week of being in the hospice is still a complete blur to be honest, I barely ate or drank for a week whilst the staff helped me get on top of my pain. I laid in bed in the dark and lost just over 10kg that first week. Since then, I have spent most of 2022 in the Hospice while the amazing teams there have looked after me, and tackled the complex issue of getting my pain medication re-adjusted to a level where I feel comfortable. I managed to trial a few nights at home, and get my first round of chemotherapy under my belt last week which was all thanks to them. Now they have got me to the stage where they felt comfortable enough to discharge me at the start of this week at the time of writing. It is great to be home.

I spent four weeks in the Hospice and cannot fault the experience and care I received wether that be from the volunteers serving up some great cakes in the afternoons, the lovely lady with the evening booze trolley (yeah, that’s a thing), or the nurses and medical teams who always went above and beyond to try and make sure I was as comfortable as possible. Nothing was ever too much for anyone working at the Hospice. If you are going to be admitted to a Hospice and The Thames Hospice is your local then you are pretty lucky. It is situated on a lake with really nice rooms and amazing facilities for patients and their families. I feel really reassured knowing that they are so close by and am so thankful that they exist. 

So that was a brief summary of how 2022 started. Onwards and upwards from here! Oh, and for anyone that has offered to come and visit me in the near future, you had better be prepared. Rather than the aforementioned ‘squirrel storing his nuts in one side of its mouth’, this particular squirrel now looks like he has a couple of gobstoppers stuffed in there and now has dodgy hearing. Bollocks. Roll on round two of treatment next week, and here is to hoping it gets to work on the gobstoppers.

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Michael x

Thames Hospice