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Story
Andrews’s
I’ll start at the
end. It’s just over
12 months since my
treatment for HPV 16+
Oropharyngeal Squamous
Cell Carcinoma of an Unknown
Primary ended, and I am happy to
report that I am entirely cancer free
at this time. The most amazing thing is
that I am an even more positive and healthy
person than I was before the Big C landed –
with a few little kinks! The journey to get to where I
am now has been far from easy though.
I had little or no experience of cancer except for my
mother dying of an untreated melanoma in 2015.
I had certainly never heard of Squamous or throat
cancer and had absolutely zero idea of how it was
treated and what that treatment would do to me.
It’s the knock on effects of the treatment that the
awesome folk at the NHS don’t really want to
expose to you and for very good reason. Of course,
everyone wants to be cured, I am pretty sure the
survival percentages would drop dramatically if every
throat cancer patient could really understand what 6
weeks of daily radiotherapy of the neck does to you.
I am
just an
ordinary
56-year-old
English guy who
was diagnosed
with throat cancer out
of the blue in November
2016. Having gone through
the last 18 months, what I
want to share with this story is
simply this:
“Keep battling and stay positive -
the power of the human mind and the
strength of those around you will make
your journey easier, whatever the outcome”
I remember distinctly the moment that my quiet,
unassuming but amazing ENT surgeon told me that
I had a cancer of unknown origin somewhere in my
mouth or neck. I was already 95% certain he was
going to tell me the worst, so I was not surprised at
all. I was with my wife of 30 years and on being told,
my first words were:
“I don’t care what you do to me even if it means
being dipped in a vat of acid, let’s get this thing
sorted!”
A tiny smile flitted across his face but all he said
was that he would give me a Radical Right Neck
Dissection to remove the tumour and then I would
have 6 weeks of chemo and radiation therapy. How
little did I know…
I had a PEG (tummy feed tube) fitted which was not
a pleasant experience, boy was I glad of it after four
weeks of radiation.
I had an Unknown Primary cancer, meaning no-one
knew where its exact origin was, I had to have
“shotgun” radiation treatment for my entire neck
area. This caused more trauma to the throat than if
say they targeted just your tonsils. And by week four
my taste was going, saliva was turning to a shitty
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