March 2007 Archives

How it all began (Part 2)

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I've never been like Geoff Capes but before all this I was fit and healthy.

Each week last summer I was running 5km, swimming, doing boxing training and playing 5-aside with lads from the Examiner down at Soccer City in Waterloo. I don't smoke or drink (excessively) and I still find it hard to understand how quickly I became so seriously ill.

Truth be told, I had been suffering slightly for the previous 18 months. I seemed to pick up colds and chest infections remarkably easily and then they would stay around for three weeks, whereas previously they would have cleared up much more quickly.

Introduction

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"How long would I have lived if I hadn't driven myself into hospital?" I asked.

"Maybe about another two or three weeks, it's hard to tell," my consultant replied.

That revelation was like a slap in the face. Everything else that was swirling around my mind; being a cancer patient, the length of time I would be in hospital, chemotherapy and its awful side effects, the fear of not achieving remission, all collapsed into a single moment of clarity - there was no choice but to start treatment.

That meeting took place in early December between my consultant, girlfriend Poppy, my parents and sister.

On reflection the early days were overwhelming. I was a fit and healthy 25-year-old, who doesn't smoke, has no history of cancer in the family and has a job I like. It was hard to understand why all this was happening and to comprehend the difficult times that lay ahead.

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This page is an archive of entries from March 2007 listed from newest to oldest.

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