Faith and Cancer

On Friday I trod the now all too familiar path back to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn. I was there for my first maintenance treatment. As the chemotherapy worked in killing the cancer cells in my body, and as the type of cancer I have means that medical science can not completely cure me. They expect my cancer to return. By having 2 years of maintenance treatment the hope is that any possible relapse will get pushed further and further away. My maintenance treatment is much shorter than chemo. It only takes three hours as opposed to all day! I arrived at 12noon with some bacon sandwiches that I had brought with me - the hospital ones still make me nauseous as I has plenty of them during chemo sessions! I had another cannula inserted, but this went OK. No fainting this time. I still had to have pre-meds that consist of paracetamol and antihistamine to help my body not react badly to the medication. Half and hour after this I have the 2 hour drip of Retoximab

All this week BBC Breakfast is running a series of programmes called #alightoncancer. It promises to be full of information, advice and updates on the latest research into the very complex disease. As a cancer sufferer myself it has certainly captured my attention. I will be updating this post as the week goes on - so please do check back to see what I learned each day. Here is a video clip where they answer the question: 'What is cancer?' I hope you find it helpful and informative. Let me know what you think about the week-long series in the comments section below. It will be good to get a discussion going. Men and Cancer On Tuesday the focus was on men and Cancer, how men tend to deal with the problem, or not! Men are statistically less likely to go to the GP if something is not right. In fact I would have waited longer if it wasn't for my wife who insisted I go. If you suspect something is a miss, or yuhave found an unexplained lump -

Over the weekend around 500 delegates made their way to central London for the 10th annual Premier Digital Awards and Conference. The conference happened during the day of Saturday 12th with 36 contributors and six 'streams' to choose from the conference just keeps getting bigger and better - equipping and empowering the church to share their faith in the digital space. There were some thought provoking and challenging keynote addresses: 'Finding God Online' by Lucy Peppiatt from the Westminster Theological College; 'The Dark Side of Digital' by Abbie Gilligan from the NSPCC and 'Church, What Is It Good For?' by Pete Phillips from CODEC.

I was back in hospital again yesterday - although this time it was planned. I was in the Day Surgery unit having my stent removed. Upon first discovering the very large tumour in my abdomen back in May, the doctors inserted a stent to allow adequate drainage from my left kidney. Stents have a limited life and need to be changed or removed after a few months. So this procedure was booked in for some time.

Today I had an appointment with my consultant where I found out about how well my chemotherapy treatment had gone and what was going on inside my body by finding out the results of the PET scan I had a couple of weeks ago. It is good news! The doctors say that my scan revealed no living cancer cells in my body. I still have a small mass of scar tissue of dead cells (approximately 7cm x 3cm) where the massive tumour in my abdomen used to be, but it has drastically reduced in size and they are dead and no longer active. I am now in complete remission! Praise God!