My cancer journey

After meeting many people on my journey I decided to put this website together, I have been told I should write a book on many occasions, but I think that might be incredibly boring. I hope my story will urge people to get checked out. Feel free to get in touch by leaving a comment or filling in a form, but please if you are feeling tired and not yourself, I urge you even before reading this to get checked out by your doctor and get screened.

People tend to stay quiet and hope whatever symptoms no matter how small they feel will go away, sometimes it can be a case of being pigheaded, stubborn or that male macho mentality. Don’t be embarrassed just do it!

It is very easy to be afraid to get checked out which is understandable, however this disease is a silent killer, so if you have to beg your doctor to test you at least twice a year it will be worth it, don’t put it off. If your doctor insists you are young, healthy and you don’t need to worry, get another doctor. I’m not looking for attention, pity or sympathy just looking to raise awareness.

This is also a very long winded read and could potentially bore you senseless but it was cathartic and helped me to move on.  Please pass this on to anyone who you think this might help.

January 21st 2016 last I first found out that I had cancer , no signs or symptoms apart from finding it difficult to swallow food and being very tired and feeling down in myself since May 2015. I didn’t smoke and rarely drank, working during the week always busy and active.

I first approached my GP in November 2015 with flu like symptoms. . This time I had broken out with 9 cold sores around my lips, feeling very tired and had a constant craving for sugary foods, I asked that they check for diabetes, the tests came back clear, the doctor said that my white blood cell count was low and to take vitamins.

Roughly two weeks later I was back in with my GP again with flu like symptoms and this time stated that I had difficulty swallowing, she prescribed some medication for acid re-flux, a few weeks had passed and I still had problems swallowing, so I called my GP again on the 21st of December 2015 and we agreed to wait a few weeks to give the medication a chance and then organise an endoscopy. It made sense, trying to organise an endoscopy three days before Christmas was not going to happen.

I thought no more about it, I was relieved that the Christmas break was upon me so I could rest up, I told my wife that I lost weight even though I was still stuffing my face with sugary foods at the time. She looked concerned while I laughed off my sudden weight loss. At this stage I would need to drink a pint of water to wash food down. I had no other pain.

After the Christmas break I told a colleague at work about the problem swallowing, he said I should call the GP straight away that he had a family member who had similar symptoms but theirs was bad news, advanced oesophageal cancer.

I called my GP to organise an endoscopy, an appointment was set up for the 21st of January 2016 at 8.30am at Bantry hospital. For some reason that morning I chose not to be sedated for the endoscopy but to take the localized anesthetic in the form of a throat spray instead. I was seen at about 11am and remember the consultant there and then telling me it was not good news, it was a tumour and he advised that I call my wife.

I told her the news and she came straight in with the child, I was getting a CT scan done at this stage, they also discovered a spot on my left lung and my knees started to buckle. They also found spots on my liver and sent me for an ultrasound, I was genuinely scared and panicking on the inside.

My wife and our daughter came into the room with me, luckily the lady told me that they were only cysts on my liver and were not malignant, later that afternoon we met with  the consultant again who looked genuinely upset when speaking with us, he knew from just looking at the tumour that it was malignant. The nurse who was with him was as supportive as possible she gave some yogurt to my daughter, it felt like I was doomed from the body language of the medical team.

Tuesday the 26th of January 2016 at 2.00pm we met again at Bantry hospital to discuss the results of the biopsy taken from the endoscopy. All weekend was a roller-coaster of emotions, anger, sadness, despair and hopelessness to name but a few. My GP had prescribed something to help me sleep, I still could not sleep. I woke up at 2.00am on Saturday morning in a cold sweat and said to my wife ‘I’m afraid I’m going to die‘, she assured me I wouldn’t.

We met with the consultant in Bantry hospital and it was not good news, I had a tumour measuring 5-7cms , the cancer was an aggressive type sitting in my oesophagus sitting above the distal junction, my lymph nodes were also enlarged around that area and he was also concerned about the spot on the lung. This type of cancer was very rare for someone my age.

On the 28th of January 2016 I met with a consultant from the Mercy University Hospital , in the outpatients department, this was down a side street in what looked like a bunch of prefabs. My wife and my cousin were with me for moral support. There was a queue when we went in the door, so I gave my details to the lady behind the counter and sat down in the section marked with blue chairs and waited , not long afterwards  I was called into a room where they weighed me and took my height.

The consultant seemed very relaxed and confident about my case, we came away from the meeting with some hope, it lasted no longer than 30 minutes. We met the dietician after speaking with the consultant who advised on what I could eat, things seemed to be very calm on this Thursday, we all felt ok coming away from the outpatient department.

I remember visiting my GP on the 1st of February 2016 at 8.30 am, my mother was with me, I was quite upset, my GP assured me that everything was moving as fast as possible, I came home and was smashing wood like a man possessed.

An iconic quote from the Rocky Balboa movie came to my head :  “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”.

This was now my mantra. I made my mind up at this stage that whatever lay ahead I was not going to go out without a fight.

I quickly got a network of four people together who were survivors that I could talk to, one of them a very close friend Fionnuala that I was introduced to through my cousin Maureen who knew Fionnuala for years. Fionnuala was an amazing, brave, very genuine, kind and determined lady who really helped me. Sadly she lost her battle on the 22nd of December 2016 , unfortunately that is the reality of this insipid disease. My pal John in Dublin rang me after I left him a frantic voicemail and gave me great advice as he had been through a similar ordeal, he was great, he motivated me and helped out a lot and still does to this day.

The other was a gentleman I knew since my college days who had come through the other side, I initially called him and he would check in regularly , Pat really helped me, we managed to meet up before I headed back to Germany in June and he gave me great advice on what to expect before and after an oesophagectomy.

My aunt got in contact with her neighbour Liam who is also a survivor. I called him and he quickly offered to help me,  we didn’t know each other from Adam, never met but he was such a calming influence over me and had a wicked and warped sense of humour. He told me when he was given his news, that he organised his will and own funeral and had ‘Burn, Baby Burn, Disco Inferno‘ as the song to be played in the crematorium. Now I can laugh at it but at the time I was not ready to sort my will or funeral arrangements out.

My friend Catherine who I used to play music with called around with Essiac tea and offered much support to us all, she also gave us some useful websites to research for ourselves, she kept supplying the Essiac tea to us and was a very supportive friend.

On the 2nd of February 2016, I was scheduled for a PET scan in Cork University Hospital  to determine if the spot on my left lung was cancer.  My appointment was cancelled as the PET scanner broke down! We were told it was the only one available in the whole of the Munster region at the time.

I had to wait two more days, this was really stressing me out, I felt overwhelmed by loneliness and helplessness, ‘tick tock , tick tock‘ I kept looking at my little girl and trying not to cry. These seem like small things now, but at the time it was massive. I visited ARC house in Cork City who were very helpful and supportive.

 On the 4th of February 2016 I finally had the PET scan done. I had to fast for this then told to wait in a room and relax as they injected  radioactive dye into my arm and then wait some more with the lights turned off.

I recall feeling very scared and unable to relax, anyway when the scan was over I had to walk down a designated line at the end of a corridor to the exit, there were biscuits and tea, I just drank an energy drink. I was radioactive up to 24 hours after the scan, I couldn’t hug my girls, my daughter got very upset and didn’t understand what was going on, she was only three.

I had a craving for chips, so my wife dropped me at McDonalds , ordering food was surreal, I was conscious of the fact that I was radioactive so stayed a safe distance from staff and customers, I felt like a complete outsider and very lonely, I had a hard time swallowing so didn’t really enjoy the food, this would oddly be my last fast food stint again.

I remember visiting my GP again, she didn’t have the results but promised me she’d contact me straight away when she got any news. There was lightning and her computer system and electricity went down, in fairness to her she had to ring around to get the results. I drove into work and just as I got in she called me confirming that it was cancer also in my left lung but explained that a biopsy would have to be taken to determine the type and stage of cancer, she also explained to me that it could be a metastasis or even new type of cancer. I thanked her for her quick actions.

I called the Mercy University Hospital  back again explaining to the consultant’s secretary that it was now confirmed that it was in my lung and we needed to act fast. The consultant himself called me back later that afternoon and told me I would be getting a biopsy done on the lung to determine what kind of cancer it was. He told me an appointment would be in the post.

My cancer liaison nurse, called me later that evening I think this might have been the 9th of February and told me what time the appointment was at, she also advised that the lab culture may not be ready for my next appointment on the 18th of February 2016 and that the results would be pushed out and discussed at the next tumour conference meeting the week after.

I saw red and said no that this was my life and to speed it up, I was very angry and upset but the poor girl was only trying to help me, she agreed to meet me at the entrance of the Mercy University Hospital on the 11th of February and would guide me to where I needed to go.

After I ended the call, my conscious came at me, how could I be so rude to someone who was trying to help me, my emotions were all over the place, I felt guilty, the next day I had acupuncture , on the way back I called into Dunnes Stores in Bishopstown Court. I picked up an orchid and a card to give to my cancer liaison nurse.

On the 11th of February 2016 we got up at 5a.m and left at 6a.m showing up to the Mercy University Hospital at 8a.m  for the biopsy. My cancer liaison nurse met with us and I gave her the orchid and apologised for my outburst. We had to go into a small waiting room with a ticketing system. We waited here for about twenty minutes and had to provide our details to a gentleman over a counter.

The CT guided lung biopsy itself was done by midday, I suffered a pneumothorax as a result of it. In simple terms a pneumothorax is like an air leak in your lung. Just before the consultant performed the guided CT biopsy I told him I was afraid and he said he would try his best not to hurt or harm me, coughing over me as I lay face down didn’t help my confidence as I heard various lung tissue being deposited into a Stainless steel surgical kidney bowl. I will never forget the pain of it, the blood eagle sacrifice to Odin sprung to mind at the time. Apparently 15-20% of the population suffer a pneumothorax after a lung biopsy, I found this out after I signed the consent forms.

It was a sharp stabbing pain into my lung, it felt as if I was drowning, there was a lot of gurgling going on, the porter and nurse took me back to the ward I was first admitted into, they were giving me oxygen even though I was clasping the side of the stretcher in agony, then when I got back to the ward, the doctor came and gave me morphine.

I had to stay overnight even though the consultant who performed the guided CT lung biopsy was initially going to leave me home. It would have been nice to have known this beforehand as I had no pyjamas! Be prepared if you ever have the misfortune of having a guided CT lung biopsy done.

My wife stepped out to buy me a Megadeth CD , I can’t remember for the life of me whether I asked for it or not. I must have been delirious, but it was very kind of her, what a rotten birthday she had watching me writhe in pain and having to wait until I secured a bed for the evening. She drove home again, a friend of mine from work came to visit me that evening, it was great to see Mark, ironically enough he was the work colleague who initially told me to get checked out when I was telling him about the swallowing difficulties.

Anyway the next morning I had another lung X-ray and things looked like they were improving so my wife drove all the way from Bantry to come and collect me. We briefly chatted with the dietician again to see how I was doing. I did not return to work on Friday the 12th of February, I just stayed in bed recovering, concerned neighbours and friends called around, my cousins came awith a trailer load of wood to make sure we were warm. The kindness of people was amazing.

On the 15th of February 2016 I had a lung X-ray done in Bantry hospital , it was a lovely sunny day and I didn’t have to wait very long. The pneumothorax had reduced in size, I drove back into work. My pal Mick gave me a call to check in on how I was doing, offering support and some hilarious harmless yet slightly warped jokes, just my taste. It was good to hear from Mick, we went back a long way, we used to walk to school together years ago, talking about the latest metal releases back in the day. The drive home was less of a chore.

I had an appointment scheduled with the upper GI consultant in the Mercy University Hospital on the 18th of February 2016, at 10.05 a.m , that is when they told me there was nothing they could do, the oesophageal cancer had spread to my lung and was inoperable and incurable, I was given eighteen months to two years to live with palliative chemotherapy.

It didn’t sink in when they said they weren’t going to operate, I thought they were going to treat me with chemotherapy and there was no need to operate, I was shaking the consultant’s hand thanking him, he had to break it again to me ‘inoperable and incurable‘. My wife was shocked and tearful when the news was being broken to us. The reality still hadn’t sunk in with me yet.

My cancer liaison nurse was comforting us, she was very nice. I told her I wanted to survive and she handed us some literature from the Irish Cancer Society. I called my boss and told him, there was a deafening silence and then he asked in a genuinely shocked voice, what do we do. I remember saying just keep calm and we’ll march on as normal.

We just drove home in silence, tears coming down our faces, my mother was at home minding the child, breaking the news to her was one of the hardest things ever. I woke up the next morning and made some phone calls to my support network, and then like a broken record skipping in my head I started to hear the stuff of nightmares and laughed, those high pitched chipmunks, yes the Gibb brothers and that song by the Bee Gees ‘ Stayin Alive’ .

I started listening to ‘ Megadeth’s Dialectic Chaos/This Day We Fight‘ and this got the blood pumping, I found a pair of purple dumbbells ( My wife’s I swear!) and started exercising, I was punching the air in anger with them, no I wasn’t wearing purple matching spandex pants and top, and no I was not listening to the ‘ Fame’ TV theme either. I started doing  1 x 10 Dumbbell overhead press, 1 x 10 lateral Dumbbell Raise, 1 x 10 Dumbbell front raises, 1 x 10 Dumbbell upright rows, 1 x 10 Dumbbell curls, and repeated these 10 times every morning no matter how weak or badly I felt. I reckoned the stronger I was physically and mentally the better chance I had of surviving.

 It was later that week that the despair and anger hit me really hard, my head was spinning, people would call and recommend that I try this remedy and that remedy, people meant well but it was overwhelming at times. I found the symptoms that I was experiencing , especially the pain in my back suddenly intensified. I still kept exercising though.

I told close neighbours who called around what the news was, some of them organised getting the sheep scanned to see if they were in lamb and took them away to be sold. My head was splitting at this stage, I was still travelling to get my acupuncture done. A few days later a book appeared in the post it was from my cancer liaison nurse, ‘Cancer, Your first 15 steps‘ , this did prove essential reading for me especially when in Germany.

I was trying to weed out snake oil merchants from scientifically proven remedies, we were looking at clinics in Bavaria, my old boss Lars, researched some reputable clinics there but they were very expensive. We were scouring the internet trying to find clinics in Europe as well as Germany. She was also frantically making smoothies and introduced me to herbal teas as well as making me drink wheatgrass while it looked and tasted like silage in a glass. Not that I ever ate or drank silage!.

My friend Greg and his wife Helen called , gave us a giant hug and massive support, they really were fantastic and cheered us up, they came with mushrooms they picked off  white birch bark and a respirator to help get more oxygen into my lungs. I know what you are thinking mushrooms yeah right!, but these mushrooms contain betulinic acid which is known to cause apoptosis in cancer cells, they showed us how to make a tincture up that I could take once daily, this was safe , it wasn’t some witch doctor potion.

Greg had spent countless hours researching scientific facts like these and emailed me valuable scientific journals as well as researching among many topics the effectiveness of strawberries on cancer cell growth. My wife also spent many hours researching and contacting people in Germany desperately trying to help in any way possible.

The key thing I found vital was to keep the spirits up was to have a laugh and a sense of humour, my very good friend Karen kept me entertained with hilarious jokes that she private messaged me with , she still to this day posts really funny jokes, she was really great, checking in on me every now and then, offering any support possible but mainly hilarious jokes, the same goes for my old boss Patrick , Gavin and John who setup a chat group, with the funniest Viz clippings and slagging known to mankind, it literally hurt to laugh after the lung operation but it was worth it.

Another friend Helene sent many positive messages but told me she’d kick my ass if I didn’t beat cancer too, this made me laugh, she cheered me up with her comical texts, the same with my friend Grace from college, her support was phenomenal. Another friend Karen Hayes who had known about oesophageal cancer was offering me support and highly relevant advice and putting me in touch with support groups. I still can’t believe the kindness of people.

I was also lucky that a school friend  who is now a doctor based in Australia helped me decipher the medical jargon and offer moral support, my friend Ritchie was great, his mum Marese also contacted me and what a truly amazing woman she is, other college and school friends called down , Keith , Matt flew in from the UK and came down with Keith, my school friend John who is based in the UK stayed in touch with me by phone.

My friend since primary school Kevin texted me offering support and we had many conversations, he offered so much support and help, friends from college rallied round me Bernard, Mike, Dave, Paul, Gemma, Brian, Kiwi, my family were superb cousins were offering their support through emails,texts, cards, work were absolutely amazing, sending me videos that they made which were hilarious sketches, they were not pressuring me and let me continue on working as long as I could.

There was a massive push of support in work, there were a group of people who set up a group and they really put a smile on my face, other people preferred to email and text me individually, I was blessed with these people by my side. Management were fantastic too.

My friend Damian was also amazing, there every step of the way he was constantly emailing me checking if I could sleep, researching things for me online, he came and took me for a drive on a Sunday afternoon the 21st of February 2016 as I had to get out of the house, we drove around trying to make sense of the situation, I was very down, I guess numb more than anything but he told me not to give up, he kept urging me to go to Germany, as did another pal Kiwi.

The support was phenomenal, Damian also came and took me to a counsellor , who I found was also a cancer survivor and waited patiently while I spoke with her, the appointment was at 7.30pm on a Tuesday evening, that kind of friendship is a rare quality, especially as he was so busy.

Another neighbour Markus called around and was a very good listener, offering every kind of support to our family, Steve another neighbour who is a doctor really got stuck in and helped me get in touch with people in the medical world based in Canada, Steve visited me, sent texts and was a marvellous support.

On the 23rd of February 2016 we met with the oncologist in the Mercy University Hospital who was recommending that I take palliative chemotherapy to prolong my life, he mentioned that there was an HER2 amplification found in the tumour cells, so he was putting me on a clinical trial called ToGA combining Cisplatin, Capecitabine and Trastuzumab, the oncology nurse handed me a MacMillan handout on the side effects, it seemed like a really bad dream.

The oncologist was a very nice man, kind, knowledgeable and caring. Inside I just felt raw my gut instinct was to get out of there and get a second opinion fast. We asked if he minded me getting a second opinion and he was fine with that. I bid adieu to the gentleman and set about saving my own life.

I remember it was a sunny day and we left the outpatients smiling and feeling positive. We met with our friend Fionnuala who was in remission at the time at a restaurant in Dunnes at Bishopstown court. It was lovely meeting her in person, she was a real inspiration telling us what she did in her fight, we warmed to her straight away, she really was something else.

It was actually our first time meeting up as previous to this we had just spoken over the phone. She had battled cancer twice, she was telling us how singing in the local choir helped her cope and she gave us some wonderful advice. She had to go so we said our goodbyes but we stayed in contact  when I was in Germany, updating each other when possible.

Luckily Donna, a work colleague contacted me I cannot say how thankful I am to Donna, she was like a guardian angel, she restored my faith in humanity, Donna was so helpful and put me in touch with her cousin’s husband Dr. Hooman Noorchashm who is a thoracic and cardiac surgeon. Donna was offering so much support via email, what a truly kind person.

Dr. Noorchashm has courageously campaigned alongside his wife Dr.Amy Reed to ban the practice of using laparoscopic power morcellation in the removal of uterine fibroids or the uterus due to possible cancer risks. Their story is worth reading, if anyone is an inspiration it is Dr.Amy Reed, she went through hell  a truly amazing lady with an amazing and dedicated husband. Please if you can visit her website. What she has been through was harrowing . More details on Amy’s story can be found here. Sadly I have found out that Amy has since passed away.

Dr.Noorchashm emailed me straight away and offered very solid advice, he gave me the name of a specialist in Boston and even Cc’d him in on the email conversation, I sent my medical files over straight away, although I had to wait another few weeks for the disks to arrive to me before I could send the across to Boston.

Donna kept supporting me via email and was just very helpful, always willing to lend a hand, we were going to go to the States as we sent our file over but when we broke down the costs  it was just out of our league and prevented me from going for treatment in the US in the end. To be honest though, I had every faith in the team that Donna and Hooman introduced me to and would have travelled there and to this day I am very grateful.

So our luck was against us when trying to get to the US for treatment but our second stroke of luck was that my wife had a plan B, marrying a German has its perks!. She used to work in a hospital in Germany, she had sent my file straight onto her old boss in Germany who is also a doctor but had since become a financial director over a group of hospitals in the Neuweid area.

A dedicated tumour conference team were willing to treat me, their approach was unconventional but that is what was needed in a case that was so unconventional for my age. They were going to operate on the tumour in the lung first and then treat the main tumour in my oesophagus like it was localized to that area.

I was noticing the constant pain at the back of my left rib-cage and a sharp stabbing like pain in my left ear going down my jawline, apparently these were more symptoms. By the 1st of March 2016 the pain in my ear was unbearable so I went to my GP, my ear looked okay but there was a bit of inflammation there , I told her about my plans for Germany she was delighted and encouraged radio-chemotherapy and thought it would blast the main tumour. She gave me a prescription for antibiotics and advised only to take them if the pain in my ear was very bad.

I then went to the pharmacy to get my antibiotics and they handed me chemotherapy tablets that were sitting there since the 23rd of February 2016, my GP didn’t know that the chemotherapy was in the pharmacy, no one from the Mercy University Hospital contacted me to advise that the medication was in the pharmacy, the pharmacist didn’t call for that matter, I wasn’t going to take any of these powerful drugs without direction from the oncologist/his nurse/my GP first.

My confidence now was at an all time low, I was not going to chase the oncology nurse in Ireland who at the time who was very unpleasant in general, I came home and we decided to book our flights to Germany for the 4th of March 2016 flying out from Kerry Airport.

We felt enough was enough we were six weeks into a fatal prognosis and we felt that there was still nothing being really done, waiting another week for an appointment seemed like an eternity to us, and the attitude of the oncology nurse was not good enough for me to be honest. In one way we could be grateful to her because her behaviour was instrumental in me deciding to go abroad. She shall remain nameless! People like her should not be in that position, a fence post would have had more empathy.

My poor friend Damian wanted to surprise me at the airport before we departed to wish me luck, he was wondering why the airport was so quiet, it turned out we forgot or never told him we were flying out from a different airport. Damian assumed we were flying out from Cork. I was touched by this gesture, I had good people in my corner which was half the battle.

My good friend Michelle Masters who is in San Diego was also keeping my spirits up with her dry sense of  humour, we had a great exchange of messages going on which broke up the monotony of that special ‘RyanAir experience’.

You got to love those those RyanAir lottery tickets, cramped seats, silly music and people clapping when you land, awesome experience indeed. Michelle also stayed in touch during my treatment and sent me a brilliant postcard. Thanks Michelle!. Anyway back to the story,  we landed at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport and were greeted by snow. I didn’t care about the snow at all, we had no time to waste anymore time was against us.

My mother and father in-law were there to meet us. My father-inlaw had a blanket ready for me in his brand new ‘007’ car, he was joking but I was very impressed, boys and their toys! There was freezing fog at the airport so driving was challenging to say the least, we waited for my wife and her mother at a garage, they arrived in the rental car and so we drove home to Mendig , which was an hour and a half away. Waking up on Saturday morning watching the snow falling as I was looking out my bedroom window in Germany, contemplating what was next is etched into my brain forever.

The Hospital in Cork  had called me on Monday the 7th of March 2016 to ask me if I would be okay to come into the ward to be given directions on how to take the palliative chemotherapy that was sitting in the pharmacy since the 23rd of February 2016 as well as administering the drug for the HER2 amplification.

I advised I was in Germany getting a second opinion, the nurse asked when I would get back home, I said that I wasn’t sure that they were going for a curative approach in Germany. My father-in-law then took me for a drive and told me we have a battle on our hands but he will stand with me and believes we can win, he thought the medical teams in Germany would be able to cure me.

He held my hand and told me to be brave and he knows I have enough courage to get through this. A few days later I got an email from the oncologist back home asking for an update which I did, in fairness to him he wished me the very best of luck.

There were many questions and doubts, we didn’t know who the team were or what their expertise were, we didn’t know if we would be able to stay in Germany very long, when I would get home, the costs, sorting out transportation etc.

All of this seemed irrelevant after meeting the lead consultant at Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St. Elisabeth in Germany on the 9th of March 2016, a very nice man with fluent English, he told me that the cancer was very far advanced and they would try for a curative approach but cannot guarantee anything. He was even trying to sort out accommodation for us in Bonn until we told him we were only 50 kilometres away.

He said his youngest patient who was 23 years old also had adenocarcinoma in his stomach and they tried to treat that but he died when he was 25,  there was a tear in my eye, the drive back to my in-laws’ house in Mendig was a sombre journey.

The next day 10th of March I had a CT scan at Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St.Petrus done to see if the tumours had spread or even gotten bigger, the scan lasted eight minutes, again the radiologists had fluent English, one of them even remarked on my Black Sabbth t-shirt and said his brother was a huge heavy metal fan. I started to smile but I was very worried about the sharp shooting pain down my left jaw, we thought it was another tumour growing in my head.

I couldn’t face another doctor so let my poor wife get the results of the scans, my very good friend Liam was texting me reassuring me all was okay while I sat outside anxiously waiting for the results. We had the results in 8 minutes, no change the tumours were slightly smaller and no tumour in my head!

I had to wait outside while the team were copying images onto CD for me, they came out and apologised for the delay! It only took them 20 minutes but they really meant it when they said sorry. I was used to waiting at least a couple of days for the results of the PET scan back home and was trying to explain that to them.

I clearly recall one of the radiologists saying to me that where the tumour was located was operable, and she wished me the best of luck. The Germans were very thorough but had a certain compassion about them too, I came away with some hope this time. I rang my homeopath back home to give her the news she was delighted.

On Friday 11th of March 2016 I visited the Malteser Krankenhaus Seliger Gerhard Bonn/Rhein-Sieg hospital just outside Bonn, it was in a wooded area, with a funky 80’s retro architectural design, it kind of reminded me of a Lego building with the yellow blinds, then again it was probably built in the 80’s. Check this out, the quality is not great but this was taken from one of the visiting rooms:

Anyway I met with a gentleman who I thought was a doctor but was in fact the director of the hospital, he told me in broken English that they were going to operate and get the tumour out of my lung by performing a resection. He pulled around an Apple Mac showing me the scans and where the tumour was.

He advised the operation would just take an hour and I would be operated on, on the 14th of March at 10.00a.m. He asked if this was okay and apologised that I was being done second on the list. Again I was amazed, here I was just one week in Germany, already had met with the head consultant, radiologists and now being booked in for surgery. This was reassuring, I liked the way there was no messing or delays, the pace was just right, this is how I initially imagined how it would be back home, sadly it wasn’t.

I was advised that I would be walking around the same evening after the surgery. They set realistic expectations. He explained that the next step after the lung surgery was to proceed with conventional treatment as if I had a localized stage 3 tumour. All the different hospitals and teams knew exactly what was going on, communication was seamless, this was very welcome in such desperate circumstances, no time was being wasted here.

My father in law and wife were also there and had to translate, somewhere in the conversation, ‘sheep farmer’ was mentioned and it turned out that this hospital director had a friend who was a sheep farmer in North Germany and he was fascinated, so a serious conversation ended on a light note about sheep!

I had to have a series of tests done on lung functions, bloods, kidney and liver functions. I had to sit in a contraption that looked like a phone-booth and breath into a tube for about 10 minutes, blood was also taken from my outer ear. The results were produced there and then. We met one of the head physicians who described the risks of the operation and I signed the consent forms, again her English was fluent and she was very interested in my case.

We also met the anesthesiologist who described the pain management side of things, she had no English so my wife translated. I asked if the pain was comparable to a punctured lung or pneumothorax and she confirmed it was. I could deal with this thanks to the ordeal with the earlier lung biopsy. We then went off down to administration and provided details such as my name, date of birth, address etc.

By 13.00 we were heading back home, it was my little girl’s birthday, she turned four, she knew something was not right, she kept saying that ‘Daddy has a pain in his belly‘. I watched her blow out the candles in front of me and tried not to cry, it was very difficult for all of us but we made the best of it.

On Sunday the 13th of March 2016 we drove to the hospital. I was feeling very sad as I said goodbye to my two girls, my heart sunk and a lump welded up in my throat. I didn’t want to leave them. My wife paid for my WiFi access at the main reception of the hospital and then left. I was in a room with two guys, both very nice men, the man to the right of me was very friendly, we tried to communicate through Google translate, the older man to the left of me had no English at all.

On Monday the 14th of March at 10a.m I was operated on just as the hospital director stated. The operation was a success, they carried out a pulmonary biopsy and it came back clear, which they stated was very positive news for such an aggressive cancer. So far everything was going to plan, rehab began the day after my operation, I was very sick after the operation as the morphine given to me was a little strong. I was shaking from it and vomited, the surgeon came into my room, shook my hand, saw the state of me and advised that the morphine gets reduced.

On the morning of the 15th of March I was taken to a gym in a wheelchair, a tube attached to my lung removing all the nasty contents from within. There was no messing about here, the physiotherapist Thorsten was very friendly. I felt like I was floating as I was doing my exercises though. I was still clearly on too much morphine, but they kept making me do the exercises and it paid off.

Only for my cousin Niall I would have been totally lost, he gave me access to his Netflix account and I was delighted to look at mindless action movies, it kept me content for the week.  You also have to pay for TV access in your ward so squinting at my phone was a better option. The hospital food was as bad as back in Ireland in case any clarification was needed, except for Bantry hospital, their food is fantastic! I don’t normally take pictures of food and post it online on Facebook or Instagram but this was St.Patrick’s day dinner:

Still not sure what it was, but I chanced it! It was really nice of my cousins and friends back home to send me pictures of their pints of beer and various Saint Patrick’s day festivities. The amusement wore off the more pictures they sent me, it was nice that they were thinking of me all the same!

Neighbours sent me pictures of new born lambs. My bosses called from work to see how I was doing, I was bombarded with well wishing messages from my friends, neighbours, work colleagues, I was humbled.

On the 19th of March 2016 I was let out of hospital, but I had to get a lung X-ray done first, my father-in-law came to collect me. He was his usual chatty self and he flattered the physician I had initially signed the consent forms with. She was almost blushing it was so funny, one of those situations you had to be there to appreciate fully.

We went to say a prayer at the chapel in the hospital, gave a donation and then left quietly as there was a mass on, the pain in my ribs was too much to stay for the mass. The two girls had to fly back to Ireland on the 19th of March 2016, so I stayed in her parents’ house. There was a separate apartment in the basement where I stayed, they were amazing considering all the stress they were under.

I vividly recall a few days after getting home the grim reaper chasing me in a dream. I woke up in a cold sweat, it was just one of many restless nights of sleep on the journey. Apparently that nightmare was down to the anesthetic working its way out of my system.

My mother-in-law would sit with me in the dining room and teach me German and I would teach her English, I was using a German phrasebook on my phone and then would translate to English, it was great fun altogether. My father in law would tell me many entertaining stories and jokes, it was such a burden on them but they were fantastic. He took me on many drives to cheer me up, showing me the local area, the mines and quarries, the vast forestry, telling me the history of the  volcanic region and the volcanic stone used in buildings locally.

He explained to me that many people would look for small gemstones in the fertile soils near the quarries as a hobby and try sell them for maybe €30 a piece, it was fascinating looking out over the roving landscape, a far cry from the boggy hills at home, you could see why the Romans had settled in this region.

They wouldn’t allow me do a thing. My father in law would motivate me by telling me he would stand side by side with me in this battle for my life and he knew that I would win, that I would have many knocks on the way but I would win that we must be strong and resilient and we can beat this together and would grab my hand firmly, he’d help me down the stairs to my room as I would be too weak to go downstairs myself sometimes. He really knew how to motivate me and everyone else from his days being a high ranking officer in the army.

This was the start of the battle, I found this time very lonely. According to my journal entries I would wake up crying but I got out and walked a lot and bought flowers and champagne( it was all in Aldi and champagne over there starts at €6.99 a bottle) for my mother in law as a little thank you for all she had done.

The support I had from home was amazing and helped pull me through, I recall  a good friend of mine ,Leonie would ask if it was okay to call me and would often call on her way home from work to check in with me.

She would just listen and offer to help in any way she could. Leonie also suggested journaling which I found helped me a lot on my journey, it worked similar to mindfulness for me. I’m very grateful to her for this.

My old boss also rang me from time to time to see how I was doing, just cracking some jokes and keeping it lighthearted, he was filling me in on the exciting weather and other random stuff, it was good hearing from him, he would always text first to check if it was okay to talk. I very much appreciated that.

The training manager in the UK office also called me and we filled out a survey together over the phone, it was great hearing from her, she really cheered me up and had some great news of her own to share with me, I was delighted with her good news, she was great, she stayed in touch via text and just said the kindest words ever as well as being encouraging, this was super and helped so much.

In or around this time, I also received a chain mail letter from Donna. She was keeping my spirits up, she had sent the letter on behalf of her niece Reya, there was a little drawing of a flat Reya inside. I had to get some pictures of the area I was living in with a brief historical description back to the school in the US where Reya’s teacher would read it out, and I would also post on the chain letter to another destination.

I chose to send the letter onto the office in Cork, Aaron picked it up, sent some information on Cork off to the school in the US and sent the flat Reya chain letter onto Australia. He emailed me on some pictures his contact in Australia sent him with the flat Reya. I in turn emailed these over to Donna to give to Reya. This was a very welcome distraction and probably made Reya’s day too. It was just a small thing but another example of caring friends who were work colleagues to begin with, finding something nice to take my mind off of all the serious treatment that was ahead.

My employer in general was amazing, the amount of goodwill and support from family, friends and other work colleagues really floored me and motivated me not to give up. A massive A4 envelope arrived from the hospital, I was convinced it was a bill but it was a massive Get Well Soon card from the office with a load of messages on it. This really cheered me up, they really made an effort, I still don’t know how they managed to get the address of the hospital.

I ordered an acoustic guitar online and it arrived on Easter Saturday 26th of March 2016, I was very impressed with the German postal system. I had a rough night of sleep, eating really hurt at this stage, I had to lie down after eating lunch, I slept for 3 to 4 hours, I called home and really missed my girls. I then had dinner and went for a walk, came back and looked at a soccer match with my father in law, Germany lost to England, it was a boring match. My pal Damian rang too, it was a tough day but ended well.

On the 27th of March Easter Sunday morning, it was raining heavily. My father in law drove me to Maria Laach  to see if we could buy candles but the Abbey was closed. He then drove me down to the lakeside and showed me a cabin where a very old monk he knew used to live in solitude, the monk had a bit of a drinking habit, he served in the world war and it more than likely affected him. 

I can’t remember if the monk was excommunicated from the Abbey or not, but he acted as a groundskeeper. When the monk died the Abbey rented out the area which is now a fishing and boat club. I really liked the way he went into such detail, it helped take my mind off of things. We drove home and I practised the guitar a little, I managed to just about eat at 7p.m, swallowing was hard and I was bleeding inside as the food was too hard. I was a bit down today but managed to still get a walk in.

On Easter Monday 28th of March, everything was closed not a shop or pub was open. They really take the Easter break in Germany very serious. My laptop broke again so no Netflix today but instead had a great laugh with my in-laws with our attempts to learn German and English around the dining room table. I didn’t laugh as hard in a long time, they were telling me stories about the local soccer pitch collapsing in a giant swallow hole and made a skit of it.

They were also telling me about how much they loved Bayern Munich and even slagged off Arsenal, we laughed at silly things. These people are great and cheered me up no end. I had a friend Mary also practice distant healing through Reiki, so I followed her instructions and felt relaxed and fell asleep easily.

Two weeks passed and I had another endoscopy on the 30th of March 2016 done at Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St. Elisabeth and the consultant was looking concerned, he told me the tumour was spontaneously bleeding out and gave me inhibitors. He asked me if I was getting dizzy and I looked at him puzzled, then it dawned on me, the blood loss!

The expression on his face said it all, a look of horror but he was very caring and empathetic too, he advised that feeding tubes or placing a stent in the oesophagus was not a good idea. He told me to stay on a liquid only diet until I start the radio-chemotherapy treatment.

He passed his regards onto my wife. This was another sad day, I called my mother to give her the news as my father in law went into the pharmacy to pick up my medication, no exercise was attempted on this day. It was raining and I just went back to bed and felt really lonely and sad.

On the 31st of March it was raining again, I was feeling very down after the news I received. My father in law drove me to an acupuncture clinic in Mendig it seemed to calm me a little. There was a church opposite the clinic, we went in and lit candles and tears started to fill my eyes. We said some prayers and my father in law showed me an older part of the original church, shortly after we drove home. I was in pain and just very down, I was back in bed.

There was a knock on the door, it was my neighbours’ parents who are Dutch. They drove from Amsterdam to see me and it was great seeing them. We went for a meal at a local Italian restaurant, all I could eat was soup at this stage. After the meal ended I was in severe pain, barely able to make it back to the house and could not get to sleep until 4a.m.

They called again the next morning for breakfast, I was just after having a shower and felt terrible, they left pretty shortly afterwards. My father in law took me to the local doctor’s surgery where I got my stitches removed from the lung operation.  The sun was shining and I felt that today was a good day. He took me on a shopping trip to a neighbouring town Mayen, where he bought wine as my mother was coming to visit in the next few weeks.

One of the directors at work, gave me a quick call to see how I was, this brightened me up. I was sore but it was nice to get out. On the way back to Mendig my father in law swung into a shopping area and insisted on buying me some clothes and a Darth Vader t-shirt, which was beyond cool, he wouldn’t let me put my hand in my pocket. He was too decent, we got home shortly afterwards and I didn’t feel like exercising today, went straight to bed.

I wasn’t sleeping very well at all after the surgery, I would often wake at midnight desperately running over things in my mind and in pain. I started to look at  ‘Trailer Park Boys‘ on Netflix to take my mind off what I was going through, but it wasn’t enough.

Thankfully my friend Mary told me she would carry out another distance healing Reiki session for me. Anything that would help me sleep at this stage was welcome, whatever she did all the way from Ireland, certainly relaxed me and I had the best night of sleep in a long time.

I felt terrible the next day, I was unable to exercise and was in pain after my soup at lunch, I thought how could I go on. I was only four days into the liquid diet and it was tough. I looked at the pictures of my wife and child on the bedside locker and felt sad. I spoke with my homeopath at home in Ireland and she told me she was after getting her hands on Dr.Banerji’s protocol for oesophageal and lung cancer. It was lovely speaking with her and my mood started to lift. I suddenly had another weapon to use against the cancer.

I kept my mind ticking over by practicing on the guitar. My friend Mary also sent me over a book ‘ The Journey’  by Brandon Bays, with a lovely little note that touched my heart. It was an inspiring read and time seemed to fly. I was also going for walks when I could, my friends in the office would offer kind words of support through texting, there were also many jokes and good humour coming my way, I had no choice but to be upbeat, onto the next stage of my journey.

The radiologist was based in another centre of excellence, the Mediclin Robert Janker Klinik and was amazing, we met her on the 4th  of April 2016, she had such a detailed plan put together that I felt at ease immediately. I just signed off on the paperwork even though some of the side effects were sobering! Fatigue, loss of appetite, low white blood cell count, dry skin, inflammation of the lung, injury to my heart muscle, high risk of scarring in oesophagus, impaired vomiting, long term fibrosis in the oesophagus, cardiac arrhythmia the list went on but I didn’t care just get it over with.

For some reason the lyrics of ‘Metallica’s Ride The Lightning‘  were a recurring theme in my head, my heart pounding and head thumping, I just signed the consent form. On the 5th of April 2016, the team of radiologists mapped me and marked out on my chest where the radiation beams would be literally aimed at. Please look away if you are easily offended by chest hair and no that was not a map of Texas drawn upside down either!

I was delighted when my mother and my two girls arrived on the 9th of April 2016. My wife was meant to get a manual rental car, but the car hire company were insisting on an automatic car instead and were quite rude.

My wife just asked them to cancel the car, this meant that they were more than an hour late getting back to Mendig. It was late and my mother just went straight to her hotel.

The next few days my wife set about finding another rental car, my mother was only over for six days. She told me she was constantly praying for me, she was very upset but we managed to have some fun, she would sing ‘Dirty Old Town‘ with me playing along to it on the guitar. I showed her all the get well cards I received. She then produced another batch of get well cards and mass cards, she also gave me a crucifix and some other relics.

I then met with the oncologist on the 11th of April 2016 who was also very thorough, I advised him about all the homeopathic remedies I was taking along with various teas and he advised to stay away from green tea while doing chemotherapy as they were not sure of the chemical compounds and how it would interact with my treatment. I took his advice on board.

On the 12th of April 2016, walking down two flights of stairs into a basement with a long corridor seemed really daunting at first. The sterile clinical environment made me nervous, that fear of the unknown was put to rest when my father in law got talking to a lovely couple who were also waiting, he introduced me to them in German. I had very little German but they had English. We got to know each other over the weeks, it was a good support network that we developed. We would embrace each other and encourage each other on our respective journeys. Rudolph and Regina came to visit me when I was in hospital before and after my main surgery in June all the way up to August.

The first time I was anxious, I was called and then went in behind one of a series of panelled doors. I took off my t-shirt, watch and hat. I went into this room and lay upon a treatment table. I had to lay still, the team of radiologists placed this piece of equipment like an x-ray machine over me and told me to close my eyes. The treatment table would rise maybe six or seven feet from the ground and then the radiologists would go into a control room.

I would often hear clicking and whirring sounds or noises, it would also sound like a vacuum cleaner at times. They were positioning the radiation beams to the areas mapped out on my torso. It felt strange just lying there alone, sometimes my imagination would run riot while other times I was more composed, but overall it was not bad. The team were very nice we would try and make polite conversation.

I remember a tear coming to my eye the first time I sat into my chemotherapy chair on the 12th of April 2016, after completing my first radiotherapy session earlier that morning. I was being treated with the Cross protocol which I was advised is widely available across Europe, six cycles of chemotherapy and 23 sessions of radiotherapy in total. One cycle of chemotherapy had to be cancelled on the 3rd of May 2016 as my white blood cell count fell from 3.7  down to 1.6.

I didn’t mind the radiotherapy so much as it was just 5 – 20 minutes daily, sure I felt some localised burning but that was a small side effect. The chemotherapy sessions on the other hand would last 4-5 hours every Tuesday, the radiotherapy and chemotherapy was in the same clinic which was handy.

I felt awful and very tired every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday after the chemotherapy sessions but would still get out and exercise when I could. I had a little nausea in my stomach but it quickly passed. It was quite difficult to walk as my balance was impaired, lifting my legs was nearly impossible as they felt so heavy, gravity was gone, everything slowed down around me and within my own body, everything was a struggle, my insides felt unclean. The best way I can describe how I felt was like being consumed by a plague of locusts, my eyes hurt and watered a lot, my back ached, my skin peeled and got very red around my face.

My mother flew back home on the 15th of April 2016, the two most important girls in my life stayed behind with me this time. A week later she moved into our house in Bantry and kept an eye on the place with her partner. They did phenomenal work, they painted the inside of the house, cleaned up the yard, cleared out the poly-tunnel, did gardening, cut wood and othe chores.

It was tough on them as they had no television and had no transport, some very decent neighbours called around and took them shopping, Juergen and Susanne, Gerry Wales, other neighbours called and took them out for coffee like Kathleen O’Leary.

Kathleen was also very good to me, she stayed in contact via email, sent some prayers over to me and also prayed for me, a truly kind person and totally selfless, checking in on my mother and taking her out. Brendan and Pat Harrington helped with the sheep and were very good. Jerome Lynch also called around and picked up my mother from the bus stop and dropped her right to our door. Margaret Con Thade called my mother by phone and also down to the house, she also took my mother shopping too. Phelim called and said to contact him if I ever needed a lift to Cork for my cancer treatment and aftercare. He is a volunteer driver for cancer patients in West Cork.

Greg and Helen called around to my mother too to offer support as did Dylan a neighbour down the road. Mary O’Shea also called my mother every day as did her friend Carmel back in Limerick. Another neighbour, Pat Murphy offered advice to my mother and bought her a drink when she was in town one day.

I felt sorry for my poor wife ferrying me back and forth everyday for 6 weeks , she easily covered 3000kms of road during this treatment with the rental car. Sometimes our little girl would come with us and they would go into the cafeteria and wait while I had the radiotherapy. My daughter would stay at her grandparents’ every Tuesday as it was a long wait.

We’d would try and have a laugh at the signage on trucks passing us by on the Autobahn to keep our spirits up. One childish example was a Man truck that passed us out with contact details emblazoned in all their glory on the back of it, I laughed at it so hard that tears were coming down my face, it was juvenile but what was needed. The email address on the back of the truck read ‘info@manrental.eu‘, their marketing department really thought that one through.

Brendan came to visit me from Cork on the 19th of April 2016, I will never forget the book of poetry and cards he brought me, I was too weak to get out of bed as I was after having my chemotherapy earlier. My father in law looked after Brendan and provided Germany hospitality as well as many legendary yarns and stories.

Brendan was also keeping an eye on things at home for me as well as working full time. I tried to make an effort and get out sightseeing the next day, my wife ended up driving us to Cochem , a really picturesque town located by the Mosel river. I was absolutely shattered and found it hard to walk, but I kept going on and was able to enjoy an ice cream of all things!

I was blown away by the support of people far and wide, my Godmother Áine had her local priest saying masses for me in Middlesex that had never even met me. Áine kept in close contact with my mother and offered much support.

A very close friend of mine Father Con Cronin based in Passage West, Co.Cork would check in with me very often and also call my mother. I found out that my friends from work Damien, Seamus and Victor showed up at my house on the 2nd of May 2016, during one of the busiest bank holidays and painted the outside of the house. These random acts of kindness just stunned me. Damien went through a similar experience being in hospital for a long time and he supported me non-stop, he was also very supportive to my mother.

The last day of my chemotherapy was the 10th of May 2016, I went for a 3 kilometre walk up a hill to OberMendig (upper Mendig) and felt elated that I got this far, similar to that iconic scene where Rocky went running up 72 steps in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I kept repeating to myself that I was going to beat cancer, getting more and more defiant with anger as every fervent and determined step was taken while listening to Annihilator’s ‘King of the Kill’, ‘Alice In Hell‘, various Helloween and  Testament tunes as well as  ‘Necroticism Descanting The Insalubrious’ by Carcass. The adrenaline was definitely pumping after listening to this music. There was more good news, I could feel that the tumour had got smaller as I could eat again with no pain or difficulty swallowing. The next few days were rough though, the familiar side effects of the chemotherapy had taken their toll once again.

We met with the oncologist on the 11th of May 2016 just to see how things were going, he advised against me travelling back to Ireland just yet and also to take it easy with the targeted exercise program I had set myself, as my bloods showed that my white cell count was low. Friday the 13th of May 2016 I finished my 23 rounds of radiotherapy. We gave chocolates to the staff and thanked them for everything.

I was elated but also very disappointed to miss the flight home for my best friend’s wedding on the 14th of May 2016, I was supposed to be the best man. Damian had sent a tie over to me that he specially bought in Kilkenny. He also sent over the dress for our daughter and an Asus Transformer laptop he bought me as my own laptop was failing.

This was a sad day as I was actually very sick in bed. We were thinking of setting up a Skype meeting but it didn’t happen. It was also sad because my daughter was meant to be a flower girl at their wedding. The German contingent raised a toast in Damian and Rosaleen’s honour but it just sucked to be honest. It was the first low I had on this journey. I would have given anything to have been at their special day.

We met with the oncology team on the 17th of May 2016, they took the bloods from me again and this time my white blood cell count had risen. They had given me a booster the previous week to inject into my abdomen to increase the white blood cell count. The oncologist had given his blessing for me to fly home, one of the nurses offered a chocolate to my daughter who proceeded to run around the oncology unit crying, classy!

So now that the heavy radiotherapy and chemotherapy sessions were over, we met with the upper GI surgeon on the 19th of May 2016 at Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St. Elisabeth, who would perform the oesophagectomy assuming that there were no other lesions in my body. Our meeting lasted close to an hour and a half, very detailed information on the operation and what to expect was given.

He drew up a sketch of what would be done and also recommended a book in German to familiarise myself with my new diet post op. This man was a genuine gentleman. We then set a date for the operation which was the 24th of June 2016.

We flew back to Ireland on the 22nd of May 2016 and a friend Jeurgen picked us up and then drove us home, I met with my GP on the 23rd of May and kept her up to date and handed her some letters in German, she could translate as she is also German. She also had my bloods taken.

I went back into work on the 25th of May 2016, I felt great even if very tired. I could not get over all the people in the office hugging me and shaking my hand wishing me the best of luck on my first day back. I was humbled by the genuine kindness of people in the office. I felt bad when I had to tell people to stay away due to the risk of infection, I was wearing a surgical mask and gloves.

I was also meant to meet up with a very good friend of mine Barbara Donovan for a coffee but it never happened,I picked up a bug from that the child got in Playschool and was ordered to take the rest of the week off. We still stayed in contact though and I really appreciate her messages of support, we will meet for that coffee one day Barbara!.

One of the directors in the office Paul, volunteers for the Irish Cancer Society and he was instrumental in getting someone from the Irish Cancer Society to call me, he also arranged for me to meet a nurse and the head of the Irish Cancer Society at the Innishannon Vintage Steam Rally on the 6th of June 2016, it was such a fun day out for the family, it really cheered all of us up and we thoroughly enjoyed it, we needed something like this after Germany.

On the 10th of June 2016 my cousin Gillian came all the way down to the house from Limerick to offer me support, it was great seeing Gill, she was texting me almost everyday when I was in Germany. She sent me on a lovely card and a black t-shirt with the logo ‘It came, we fought, we won‘ , which I wore proudly.

Kieran and Matt flew directly over from the UK to see me on the 11th of June 2016, it was nice seeing Matt again, but brilliant seeing Kieran. It was good seeing him as it was years since we last caught up. He also brought me down a box of Pringles, a long running joke from our college days.

Then on the 12th of June, my friend Jim who had flown over from Malta with Charlise and their adorable twins Patrick and Eryx called to see us. We had a lovely time chatting and we finally gave Jim his birthday present from a few years back when we couldn’t meet up in Cork. It was still wrapped in Christmas paper! Jim was his usual chatty self, it was lovely of them to come to see us, it was also great meeting Charlise for the first time, our little girl got upset at the two boys as they played away with her toys.

I even made it to a gig on the 15th of June 2016. I was with a very supportive bunch of friends from work, Damien, Seamus, Dave and Paula. We met another great guy called Trevor. This was a great day. I also bumped into some friends from Limerick, Mick and his brother Aron, Spud, John, Paddy, Denis, Keith, Jim and Charlise. I was wearing a mask that Dave had bought for me to keep infection away. I got some strange looks at the gig and in the pub after where there was a cover band playing.

My uncle Richard and his son Tony came down on the 18th of June and helped move a load of wood into the shed. They wouldn’t allow me to lift anything, they were just down to get the work done. They worked for hours, had a cup of tea and then headed back all the way home again, the support was phenomenal and put me in good spirits for the trip back.

A good school friend Eoin  was also messaging me offering great support before the major operation, thanks for this Eoin! I promised I would meet up later on after the recovery for a pint, which I will, but this is the kindness that really lifted me. Also a big shout out to Mark Lane who kept sending messages of support before and after the operation, I hope to catch up with you at a gig sometime!

We were back in Germany again on the 19th of June 2016, I was admitted into Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St. Elisabeth on the 21st of June 2016 , I had an endoscopy on the 22nd of June 2016, I will never forget what the anaesthesiologist said to me, ‘Don’t worry , we are giving you the same medication as Micheal Jackson took but we won’t kill you’ I started laughing and was then under. I woke up back in my room, the same consultant who looked horrified at me on the 30th of March last, came into my hospital room excited and genuinely happy that the tumour was destroyed.

I couldn’t believe it, I was in 1-10% group globally where radiotherapy and chemotherapy had completely destroyed a tumour. Not only that, Ireland had beat Italy 1-0 in the Euro 2016 championships! I rang my boss in the UK and told him, he was delighted. This was a good day, looking out the window with the sun still beating down, every prayer seemed answered, I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion.

I wasn’t out of the woods yet though. I had a CT scan done on the 23rd of June 2016. The worry dissipated quite quickly when it was the same team of radiologists who scanned me back in March. Handshakes and smiles all round with the odd joke thrown in.

I waited outside again with our little girl while my wife went into the room, no need to worry it came back clear, no tumours found anywhere. The main tumour in my oesophagus was completely destroyed. I won! I was in clinical remission!

So then the upper GI surgeon came and met me the evening before the operation, the 23rd of June 2016 all very positive and naively I asked him can we skip the operation to remove my oesophagus, predictably he said no!

His logic made perfect sense, he said that underlying tissue could still have cancer cells in them , that the radiotherapy and chemotherapy may not have been able to get at, so he would have to remove my oesophagus and certain lymph nodes, I hesitantly agreed. I was given some powder to take with water that would ‘clear me out’ and it really did do that. Paul  from work called me to wish me look for the operation, again this support was amazing.

I was operated on on the 24th of June 2016, I remember being brought down to the operating theatre at 7.30am, the nurse who prepped me had no English, but shaved my abdomen and got me moving fast almost militant. Meeting the chief anesthesiologist was a pleasant experience, this gentleman was unreal, he had a great sense of humour and very positive.

He was cracking jokes about drinking Guinness as he was getting ready to put me under, it was very relaxed for such a serious operation, the procedure itself was long, 6-7 hours in total, they removed 17 lymph nodes, my gallbladder , half of my stomach and then the remaining stomach tissue was pulled up and used to build a new oesophagus, there were various other bits removed and reused but I’ll keep it brief. The great news though was that pathology results from the body parts removed showed I was disease free.

I remember first after the operation waking up and feeling very thirsty, my mouth was dry. I was screaming in pain, I thought I was going to die. They put me under again and a few days later I woke up a nurse handed me a small cup with water in it and a small sponge where I could drip feed drops of water into my mouth. I would have to spit the water out again, the reason being that the anastomosis had not fully healed up yet and they were afraid that water would leak from the new oesophagus.

This continued for days and it was tough. I would be sweating like crazy and they would put ice packs on my forehead to cool me down. They constantly monitored me as they were afraid pneumonia would set in, which later did.

The operation was a success, but being in intensive care was not easy, for the first few weeks I had tubes sticking out of me everywhere. The area where they operated was stapled together, and of course I lost all dignity. My time in intensive care was longer than expected  even though I had beaten that foul disease there was a post-op complication!

Luckily a German doctor who was singing ‘Spancil Hill‘ ( I thought I was hallucinating the first time I heard him humming it as I was still heavily sedated) and a nurse quickly discovered that there was fluid building up in one lung and acted swiftly.

They made an incision and placed a tube in my shoulder or so it felt and they relieved the symptoms, this was two days after the major surgery. It turned out that the doctor was married to an Irish lady from Innishannon, Co.Cork and sang that to his little daughter as a lullaby.

The intensive care staff were truly amazing and really watched over me, we had many conversations about the German and Irish football teams as Euro 2016 was in full swing, one nurse was even telling me about the band he was in, he was an amazing drummer. They made me mobilize myself and sit in a special chair for as long as I could, that was agony! They were relaxed but very diligent. I still remain in contact with some of the team to this day.

They found a root cause for the fluid build up in my lung and the other bit of lung at this stage, well what remained of the left one. A lung a bit could you say!. My thoracic duct was leaking, this only happens in 1-3% of cases globally and was not as a direct result of the operation itself. They were monitoring this very closely, with X-Rays, ultrasounds and hourly check ins. They were afraid that pneumonia would set in.

One particular day I was feeling very uncomfortable and my heart rate was rising rapidly, one of the head nurses spotted this and acted quickly, I could see her roaring down the phone to someone about my condition, through the small window in my room.

It was reminiscent of a scene out of ER. Within minutes a specialist intervention team arrived and managed to get me to lean forward and scanned me with an ultrasound and found fluid in not just one lung but both also what remained of the other lung.

Two bigger drains were inserted into my left and right ribs, this was horrific, they gave me something so I wouldn’t feel the pain from the tubes being inserted. Whatever it was, I was tripping out of my brain and lost all concept of where I was and if the procedure was still ongoing or not even after the team had finished, I was completely disorientated.

To make matters worse my wife and daughter walked in on me in a distressed state and that equally upset them but we got over it. I spent weeks watching the containers on each side of my bed filling up on a daily basis. I was losing 2 litres of lymphatic fluid a day which worried the team.

I only recently found out as in, in 2018 , that I was also suffering from pneumonia during this stage of my treatment, I was honestly oblivious to this until now. Makes sense now though. I felt I was floating off at the time.

My mother and her sister Noelle flew into Bonn on the 11th of July 2016 and came to visit me. It was lovely to see them, they were staying in the centre of Bonn so it was only a twenty minute walk to the hospital. I introduced them to the wonderful team in the intensive care unit ; the head nurses of the intensive care unit, the nurse who gave me Time magazines that her husband would give her for me, the nurse who was a drummer, the nurse who was constantly praying for me and invited my girls to his daughter’s birthday party, the nurse who made a chill out CD for me to listen to, the wonderful nurse who used to cool me down with an ice pack and gave me the ‘Ireland I love you‘ CD compilation and many other kind souls. I also introduced them to the really nice doctor who sang ‘Spancill Hill‘ and finally my Upper GI surgeon.

They were really impressed with the team and totally in awe at the level of detail the upper GI surgeon went to explaining my current situation when he pulled them into a meeting room. Even though the situation was serious  and my aunt felt at ease that I was in such good hands and just could not believe how friendly and professional the staff were.

My mother was initially shocked to see all the tubes attached to me but over the next few days more of them would start to come out, the tube in my nose came out on the 12th of July, on the 13th of July 32 staples were removed from my abdomen, these were small victories going in the right direction, while I was down I was not out. I would sit on my mobilization chair and looked forward to the physiotherapist coming to me everyday, I would do light exercises with her for 20-30 minutes a day.

At this stage I was allowed to drink a glass of water a day. I was delighted, but got very ill when they tried starting me on a little Fresubin. The medical team were getting really anxious, they tried various techniques and medications to get the leaking lymph node to stop.

They were constantly researching medical journals and  administered a really strong experimental medication normally used to treat pancreatitis in the US. I was told I was possibly the only or first person in Germany to take this medication which reduced the amount of lymphatic fluid that was leaking but it was not enough, it also made me violently ill. The team decided not to progress any further with this medication.

I was a little down on the 15th of July, but then my friend from work Alan  texted me. The timing couldn’t have been better as I was in my mobility chair and cheered me up no end, it was great hearing that he was back training and got a new puppy. The cheeky chap even sent me a picture of my desk, saying I should clean it up.

I also spoke with my good friend Paul O’D from our college days and it was nice to hear another voice from home, just shooting the breeze and acting normal, I also spoke with my Aunt Nonie to wish her a happy birthday and managed to call my Aunt Kate in Australia.

I kept my illness from her as I didn’t want to upset or worry her, she meant the world to me and encouraged me to pick up a guitar when everyone else wanted to hit me over the head with a guitar to shut me up. She was such an inspiration and full of life, playing golf, darts, bowls and just generally putting me to shame at any sport she participated in, she even overcame cancer herself a few years back. I was glad to be able to speak with her on this occasion as sadly she passed away in November 2016.

This is what was keeping me going, the lads back home acting normal, cracking jokes and filling me in on what they were up to. It really made a big difference as I never felt far from home.  There were constantly in touch but never annoying whatsoever.

On the 16th of July my mother and aunt left Bonn, it was a bit sad but then my father in law and mother in law, and my two girls called and gave me some birthday presents, a gold pocket watch, one of the nurses Eugen gave me a card, another nurse Siggi gave me an ‘Ireland I love you‘ CD Compilation she picked up. Rudolph the man my father in law introduced me to when I was getting my radiotherapy came and gave me his homemade organic honey. My mother left a card, it was one of the happiest days of my life to have felt so much kindness more than 1,500 kilometres away from home.

On the 18th of July 2016 they started to reduce the pain management medication, I got very sick with cold sweats, being itchy and uncomfortable with shakes, a nurse advised me these were withdrawal symptoms from the morphine, this continued more or less for the week. They decided to move me to another room with a view as I was getting quite down, they really were doing everything they could for me.

The 23rd of July was another great day to remember, my friend Damian came all the way from Ireland to see me. It was a pity that I wasn’t in great shape, he didn’t stay too long when he saw the state of me and realising he couldn’t do anything to help.

It was very kind of him to do this, he was staying in a stuffy hotel room with no air con and could not sleep half the night but yet he came all this way to see me. He also spent some time with my in-laws before going back to his hotel and flew back home the next morning. Apparently all the nurses were in on it and knew he was coming to visit.

On the 25th of July I was still getting shakes, shivers and withdrawal symptoms from the morphine as they reduced my intake this lasted an eternity in my mind! I was still losing two litres of lymphatic fluid a day. Rudolph came to visit me again and was a calming influence.

He told me the ordeal he had to go through with his health, he had massive open heart surgery and many bypasses carried out. The man never drank or smoked in his life he always jogged and he continued to jog after his surgery. He was also taking care of his sick wife, what a hero. He was another who inspired me on this journey.

My upper GI surgeon suggested a technique carried out in the Uniklinik-Bonn  hospital on the outskirts of Bonn, next to a vast forest which could help me. The hospital was massive in fact like a maze, with many buildings sprawling a huge area. It is the only place in Germany that specialises in the procedure which involves using guided CT scans to tie off leaking lymph nodes with platinum coils, the plan was that the team would locate the leaking lymph node through a contrast medium/dye injected into me and then attempt to seal it off.

The paramedics came to collect me from Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St. Elisabeth at about  13.30 on the 26th July 2016. I had a laugh with the paramedic in the back of an ambulance who was Spanish as we were bumbling across various tramlines and cobble stoned streets. She was telling me that in Spain, ‘O’Sullivan‘ is a horrible test carried out on pregnant women to test for gestational diabetes. I was flattered! It took thirty minutes or so to arrive at our destination.

I was checked into a massive open plan ward with about 10 beds just on my side of the room alone, in total there must have been 32 patients with various tubes and machines attached to them making beeping sounds. This ward was an intermediate care unit. It wasn’t really an intensive care unit and was really busy.

I found it tough as there was just a crooked clock on the wall and no TV in the ward. There was also no 4G reception on my phone or coverage, so I just ended up staring at a wall for hours on end. The consultants came to speak with me at about 18.00 hours. They explained the procedure and side effects, I signed off on it. Then at about midnight they took an X-ray of my lung  and replaced the central line in my neck, this time piercing into my right collar bone. Man this really did hurt!

The next morning, the 27th of July 2016 they performed the procedure which failed. I was under for eight hours, they could find the leaking lymph node but were unable to seal it. I woke up in some pain at approximately 15.00 hours, they gave me some morphine for the pain. I managed to call my wife using a staff phone. There was some terrible accident on the Autobahn to Bonn from Mendig, it ended up taking my poor wife over an hour and a half to get to see me.

My wife eventually found the ward after getting lost. She was finally buzzed in by staff, had to wear a disposable gown and not allowed to sit on the edge of the bed. She left at about 18.00 hours tired and weary. I managed to sleep somehow that night even though there was one guy shouting out in agony on the opposite end of the ward. Then there was a gentleman in front of me shouting some profanity in German, from what I could gather he was telling the guy screaming to shut the f$ck up, charming!

The next morning came and as usual a nurse assisted me with washing myself. I even washed my hair with some fancy contraption placed on my head, I felt refreshed but very down. I told them that I could not stay another day as I would crack up staring at that clock. It felt like I was back in school sitting an exam staring at that ominous crooked clock. Eventually some paperwork was filled out and some phone calls made.

I still had to wait a while, a new anaesthesiologist that had just started advised me they would get me back soon. He was eager to talk to me as he heard I was a sheep farmer somehow! . He had spent many years studying flocks and genetics of various breeding sheep. He wanted to know what breed of sheep I had at home.

He was fascinated by sheep, he knew a hell of a lot from the research station he worked in. I think he even went to New Zealand to learn flock management, a really nice guy but I had to pinch myself to make sure I was not dreaming. How utterly amazing but totally bizarre, it put a smile on my face. Shortly afterwards they sent me back to the intensive care unit at Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Bonn St. Elisabeth.

I was glad to be back at the intensive care unit, as I was being transported back into my room, the nurses and doctors started clapping, smiling and giving me high fives. They had kept the same room for me and even inflated a rubber glove. They drew a smiley face on it which I thought was a chicken. They also had a sheet of paper with a little message for me ‘Welcome back Mr.O’Sullivan, do not forget , chill and relax, do not give up‘, this literally moved me to tears. It was Patrick who was a fantastic male nurse who did this.

I started to worry at this stage, but the staff were super positive. I had already beaten cancer but this other life threatening problem had become really serious now. I got my affairs in order back home. Instead of being at home recovering from the major surgery I had in June 2016 I was still in hospital feeling weary and sad for myself.

It was the second time I felt so low or sorry for myself. Siggi came in to help wash me one particular morning, she was trying to cheer me up, saying that she knew I would get better and she would love to take away my pain for me.

She was so caring, she put on the ‘Ireland I love You‘ CD she bought for me, I was enjoying  ‘Carrickfergus’ by Hugo Duncan, it reminded me of my cousin Fergus back home who sang this a lot. Then another song came on and I got really sad, it was The Dubliners take on ‘The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda’ .

The following lyrics just set me off :’ The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane. Those proud wounded heroes of Sulva. And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay I looked at the place where my legs used to be.And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me. To grieve and to mourn and to pity’

I tried to put all the negativity and sadness to the back of my mind and looked at some German TV, I picked up a few words of German, I remember one TV show ‘ Mein-lokal, Dein-lokal‘ which was a show about local restaurants and how they were rated by another team of restaurateurs, very ironic seeing as I still couldn’t eat!

The moral of this little story is that German daytime TV is as bad as Irish daytime TV!  I started practising mindfulness using an App on my phone, I found by the end of the week I was coming around again.

The rest of the staff were fantastic and were so kind, Thomas, Johanna, Rika, Patrick, Dennis, Francine, Felix, Annette, Robert, Silka , Steffie, Patrick,  Katherina, all the doctors especially the doctor from Palestine who used to sit there next to me and just hold my hand telling me I would get better, he was a super nice guy, I just can’t remember his name. The list was endless, these guys in the intensive station were super.

Another nurse Eugen even brought my wife and daughter along to his daughter Jana’s birthday party to cheer them up, he prayed for me and really looked out for me too.

My upper GI surgeon visited me before his holidays started towards the end of July and said that he was speaking with the head Professor of the radiology department in the Uniklinik-Bonn  hospital  who felt confident about tying off my leaking thoracic duct again.

They had to wait a week for the contrast medium to leave my system, he told me he would be checking up on my case when away on vacation. I was going to miss him while he was away, I wasn’t feeling well at all but still kept the faith, I had a blood transfusion given to me on the 31st of July.

Then on the 3rd of August 2016 another bumpy ambulance ride across Bonn at 08.00 and up into the vast sprawling area where the Uniklinik-Bonn hospital was located by the woods. It was raining heavily this time and I was taken to the same area as before. I didn’t have to wait this time the team took me down to the area where the CT scanner was, I remember being quite nervous before they put me under.

When I woke up I was asking for my wedding ring back. The team laughed and then it dawned on me to ask if it had been a success and it was. They managed to successfully tie off the leaking lymph node with six platinum coils! I was delighted, they achieved this in five hours this time.

I had to stay overnight and the team had to make another incision into my back as there was a fluid build up in my right lung, this proved to be the last time that there was lymphatic fluids filling my lung and a bit of the other lung. I have since found out that the gentleman who performed this procedure was in fact the director of the radiology department. I owe him my life.

I also heard that the team back in the intensive care unit at St.Elisabeth Krankenhaus were jumping up and down for the Irishman and said loads of prayers for me. They were apparently glued to their iPads waiting for the results to come in and then started jumping around delighted with the news, similar to football fans celebrating their team scoring in the Euro championship….

This was a turning point for me and I was delighted. We cried tears of joy when the leak was sealed. They did not remove the drains from my lung and the other bit of a lung just yet, they monitored how much fluid I was losing.  It went from 2 litres down to 100-200mls a day which were within the normal parameters.

The doctors were checking me and even took me out on my mobilizer to get some sun.  They also made me exercise around my bed, they were getting me ready to leave the intensive care unit after nearly a two month stay. I even managed to take a few steps out of my room and walk into the rest of the intensive care unit. The first time I tried walking I got very dizzy. I was like a baby learning to walk again.

On the 8th of August 2016 the doctors said they would check with the resident surgeon if I could start eating. This date also marked the first time I could wash myself without any assistance from a nurse, more progress!. I was slowly reintroduced to food on the 9th of August, firstly yogurt and then fluids. I was overwhelmed with this progress that tears filled my eyes. I got sick after the yogurt but still I walked as far as the elevator outside of the intensive care unit. It felt like scaling Everest, but another accomplishment.

The nurses injected tea into my small intestine and this seemed okay, no adverse reaction. Then they injected a fatty substance in there and a nasty reaction ensued. I really disliked this but it had to be done, they needed to get the small intestine working again. I was not able to tolerate much the next day and was unable to walk.

On the 11th of August I was moved to the normal post surgery ward 3c. I had a room to myself and this was the best thing ever. The room was overlooking the yard where the ambulances would park and people would go for their smoke breaks. There was a big tree next to my window and I would watch the little robins perched on the branches, a welcome distraction. I was very slow to eat the food as I was getting sick a lot and felt very down. I got sick at midnight,4am,6am,3pm and 10.45pm on the 12th of August.

This was a very difficult time, I was miserable, we were invited to another wedding back home on the 13th of August, very good friends of ours in Limerick, Martin and Sarah,  I was really hoping to make this wedding, also gutted I missed the stag! So Saturday the 13th of August sucked! Martin and Sarah understood, they were great, they stayed in touch regularly .

I managed to shift my mood by listening to some upbeat music, I repeated the same song over and over again trying to rouse myself, the chorus was catchy and energetic. It had the word ‘fight‘ in it, it was ‘Fight ‘Em Til You Can’t’ by Anthrax . Even though the song was about a Zombie Apocalypse, the lyrics ‘Fight em’ til you can’t fight no more‘ resonated with me, on wards and upwards, keep moving, keep fighting and don’t quit.

Slowly everyday I would try to eat breakfast and would get ill, just eating very small portions. My wife supported me all the way bringing me food that would agree with me. The doctors and nurses from the intensive care unit came to visit me a lot to say hello during their break. When I got the strength up, I visited them a few times and they were absolutely delighted to see the progress.

On the 18th of August 2016 the central line in my neck that was feeding me came out, this was really looking good now, however I got really sick on the 19th of August and was unable to do any physiotherapy that day. Learning to eat was very slow, it was frustrating at times as it seemed the food I was getting was not for a gastrointestinal resection like I had. By the 22nd of August all the tubes were out except the one in my small intestine, this was fantastic! I jumped, straight into the shower, well in my head I did, in reality a tortoise or snail would have reached the shower quicker than me.

I would mobilize myself after I ate lunch or breakfast, breakfast was normally two slices of white bread with some cheese or ham and weird looking stuff called ‘Quark‘. I would walk as far as the chapel and sit down and get some energy, then I would walk back to my room. On other days my physiotherapist helped me walk up and down some steps in the stairs.

My upper GI Surgeon came by to visit me the day before he was due back from his vacation and had a chat with me. He is such a knowledgeable man with great empathy for his patients. I cannot commend him enough. He is a genius but also a gentleman, I told him I was anxious to go home that I missed my girls.

He told me that he was responsible for me and that he didn’t want to let me go just yet that my kidney functions were borderline. He also explained to me that if the team in the Uniklinik-Bonn had not succeeded there was a serious possibility that I would have died, the hairs stood up at the back of my neck.

A few days later he came to see me again and we had another nice chat, he was telling me a bit about the pioneering surgery he did at the hospital he worked prior to coming to this one. Anyway to cut a long story short, he got very upset when he saw the hospital food that I was getting. He said that it was of very little nutritional benefit to me and said something to the nurse in German. He had ordered her to get me brown bread and more suitable food.

He sincerely apologised to me and told me he would speak with the dietitian and said I would get better nutrition at home. He advised me to sit up after I eat for 45 minutes, to only drink water 30 minutes after I eat, don’t drink fizzy water or eat chips and reluctantly gave me the all clear to go home.

Finally on the 27th of August 2016  I was allowed go home! Home being 80 kilometres away from the hospital. Helmut, and the two girls came along, this was a victory! A very emotional day!. It was sweltering outside, my first time outside the hospital in nearly 9 weeks. They had made such a fuss, they had decorations up welcoming me back.

My father in law had bought a special bed for me that was raised at a 45 degree angle, this was to prevent acid re-flux, they had truly thought of everything, eating was still very difficult and I was very down, I was still trying to learn how to cope with this ‘little but often‘ approach to eating and getting sick a lot but it was to be expected. The scar tissue was still very painful, almost burning into me, my rib-cage and chest were very sore.

My friend Jim sent on a little gift, it was unexpected but totally appreciated, it put a smile on my face, it was a Helloween CD and a Motörhead skull cap I could wear while my hair grew back. All these lovely gestures really helped in those dark days. My sister in law drove 500 kilometres from the south of Germany to also visit me, it was just so nice of her to do that.

The hardest part for me was the recovery, for so long you are fighting and staying strong. The adrenaline is pumping, you are in survival mode and then once you go home you are just sitting there with your thoughts and not being able to really move as you are so weak. I felt obsolete, and not to cause any offence I felt like an army veteran coming back from active duty. Looking back I guess it was a natural grieving process. Thoughts of ‘What if the cancer comes back’ ran rampant in my head.

We met with the upper GI surgeon again on the 7th or 8th of September just to check in on how I was feeling and looking before going home, he was quite happy and ordered a blood test to be taken. He gave me a hug and said I was a good guy with a good family and wished me all the luck on my journey home.

We didn’t hang around in Germany much longer. We were anxious to get home to get my little girl back into play school, so we flew back on the 11th of September 2016. I had to wear a mask to prevent an infection and was escorted to the aircraft in a wheelchair by a medic, he supported my body weight while I was boarding. It was the same scenario on the other side, except it was windy and wet at Kerry Airport! I was not in great shape, I felt terrible for weeks and was unable to eat properly. I was losing weight.

There was a massive support structure in place when I got home, my GP took my bloods, she had a community welfare nurse Mary check on me. Mary would call me everyday to check in with me, Mary also brought me a backrest and special mattress and cushion, I can’t thank her enough! Mary even arranged for her son and husband to come out and cut up wood for us before Christmas. They wouldn’t take a penny, they did this out of the kindness of their hearts.

I was also introduced to the palliative nurses who provide symptom control and helped streamline my medication. They would call every week on the phone and also call out to see how I was doing. I also had fantastic support from Arc House in Bantry and was going to my homeopathy lady for acupuncture. I literally had appointments one day after the next. I was still having a rough time and unable to walk very far, eating was very uncomfortable and I was not sleeping at all.

On Friday the 30th of September 2016  one of the palliative nurses called and advised that I go to the  Mercy University Hospital  as I had severe cramping and just felt miserable. My wife drove me up with the child, she stayed with me until 19.00 and then drove home again. I was admitted and back into hospital again!

My symptoms were occurring twenty minutes after eating, it felt like the ground was opening up and swallowing me. I’d get cold sweats and have no energy and would have to find a toilet fast!

They discovered I picked up Clostridium Difficile from all the antibiotics I had been taking in Germany. I was in isolation for 18 days. This took a while to clear up with strong antibiotics, once it was clear I felt great and actually discovered I could eat some more things that I thought I could not. I have to say I hate hospitals!

I had an NG tube fitted three times, the first one fell out of my nose into the toilet,no way was I putting that back up my nose! The second one fell out after a sneezing fit and the third one fell out while randomly eating my breakfast and minding my own business. The different scenarios and the way they fell out could not be made up! Every time I had to get a chest X-Ray done to make sure the tube was placed correctly in the remaining piece of stomach.

Thankfully some friends called into see me, Damien gave me some solid advice and chatted for a good while and raised the spirits, then on another evening Seamus, Míchéal, and Mark had called, these guys were great, Míchéal came with grapes, a muffin for my little girl and some crackers, Mark and Seamus brought a load of books with them.

Victor called in a few times as did my cousins and aunts, my mother called every second day with cheese and crackers, my old boss Carol called too and she cheered me up no end. Carol is great, she sent me many messages of support while in Germany, she even had a meditation group send me healing.

I was far from being bored, Father Con called a few times which was very nice of him, my cousin Willie called as well as my cousin Delia. My neighbour Markus tried to call during the day but due to my vague directions ended up at another care facility, he did call again one evening when in Cork, he is such a calming influence and listener, a very good guy.

Another cousin Maureen came all the way from the UK, it was lovely to see her, she gave me a lovely card, I only opened it after she left, I was mortified. Paula from work called with Olly and even brought me a Terrorizer magazine, they knew the male nurse John who was looking after me.

Paul called another day in the middle of his busy schedule. Again I was very grateful for all the support and humbled by all the visitors, more neighbours called up, John and Brendan visited on one occasion when the NG tube fell out and laughed when the doctor mentioned ‘lube gel‘ to reinsert the tube.

I was mortified, they were enjoying me wriggle as the new tube was inserted in my left nostril! My neighbour called with a music magazine and a load of Sudoku puzzles, thankfully all of these really helped pass the time.

My pal Liam also called on the 11th October and convinced the staff at the hospital that he was a doctor. He also convinced my mother and her sister, Geraldine that he was my gynecologist and he was taking me to Letterkenny for ‘R&R’, they still believed him!!!

It was very nice seeing Liam, we were meant to meet up on the day I was admitted. He had driven all the way down only for me to go to hospital. He brought the presents along for my two girls that I was supposed to take when we were originally meant to meet.

We finally got to meet face to face in the hospital after months of email, texting and that failed attempt at meeting in Bantry. Liam even offered to come over to Germany to visit me as well as offering to take me home. I will never forget the support he gave me when in Germany, all the prayers and candles he lit for me, he is one of the good guys.

All the staff at HighScope Playschool were fantastic and very flexible, Siobhan would often text to see how we were doing and offered to bring our daughter home from playschool when my wife was unable to collect her, they are a brilliant team and helped us out in so many ways that we cannot thank them enough. It is this support that really makes a difference.

The consultant looking after me was the same gentleman who told me that the cancer was inoperable and incurable back in February 2016, he was superb as were his team. They kept updating me and checking in all the time, the dietitians and my cancer liaison nurse were awesome.

I could not have received better attention, the staff on the ward were fantastic too. Although the only downside was the view from my window which overlooked the prefabs where they gave me the wonderful news last February. I also bumped into the oncologist who was giving me the clinical trials, I gave him a big wave and a smile.

On Sunday the 2nd of October I went to have another CT Scan, exactly 102 days after the CT scan on the 23rd of June 2016. I was slightly concerned when Joe the care assistant wheeled me down to the CT scanner. It looked familiar, and of course it did, it was the same place I was in for the CT guided lung biopsy, I was really nervous at this stage.

The radiologist came out to me afterwards and said there was a buildup of plaque or a calcium residue in my chest cavity and she was concerned about it. She was going to liaise with her bosses. I told her more than likely it was the six platinum coils in my chest, she still double checked and confirmed that indeed it was. Anyway it turned out that the scan was clear.

I had to get out and mobilise myself, which was okay. After two weeks I was beginning to feel more human, the only downside to it was I developed colitis. So I finally got discharged on the 18th of October 2016, since then the recovery has been very slow, I have good days and bad, some days I have no energy at all and can’t get out of bed, my wife had to carry me downstairs and back up again.

Eating is a terrible chore, I made a food diary for a while but quickly got sick of it as nothing agreed with me, I suffer terrible bouts of stomach cramps and frequently have to visit the bathroom. I am on pancreatic enzyme replacement tablets to help me break down fats in food and aid with digestion.

My dietitian and cancer liaison nurse advised that I should be able to eat most food with time but only small amounts. They continued to call me on a weekly basis to see how I was doing and offered valuable advice. A truly great team.

The palliative doctor team also met me a few months back and advised that this is part of the new me, to give myself time to adjust. That this will take up to a year or more to recover. I totally trust the team I have around me. I just took her advice on board and live the best I can day after day, I try to block out the excruciating pains that eventually result in a trip to the bathroom. My wife would often help me back to bed after bad episodes.

On the 23rd of November 2016 my friend Richie came all the way from Australia to visit me, it must have been at least eight years since we last saw each other. It was great to hear how he was getting on being a doctor/registrar in Australia.

We decided to treat him to a takeaway of all things. I looked at the menu and could not see anything I could eat except for a portion of plain chips, which was a big risk. I said I would chance it and to my surprise was okay! I had really bad acid re-flux and heartburn the next morning but nonetheless another small victory and step in the right direction.

On the 1st of December 2016 I met the team again in the outpatients department and ironically enough ended up back in the same consultation room where we got the news last February. This time though, the news was more positive, I had put up 4 kilograms since the operation in June 2016, another victory! Everyone was genuinely happy, the next CT scan is April 2017.

The main thing is that I am here to tell the tale, and enjoy life with my wife and daughter. I hope to return back to work some time as I loved what I did. I am very lucky to have such a supportive boss and company to work for. Life does go on.

I have had many post-op ups and downs along the way and have to say a massive thanks to the excellent staff in all the hospitals who have been really looking after me. The guys in the MAU unit, endoscopy unit, day surgery unit, CT Scan and X-Ray unit, and last but no means least diabetic clinic are excellent.

My advice would be to never ever give up hope no matter what you are told, seek a second opinion, never give in, question everything and always trust your gut instinct. You will be amazed at how strong you are, even in the darkest of times, I’d apply this rationale to all situations or challenges in life. You should also surround yourself with positive people.

I value every day that I am alive and stopped worrying about the future or the past. I live for the moment that I am in. I have been humbled by this insidious disease and realise that life is too short for any negativity. Embrace new challenges with a positive outlook and you can achieve anything.

Cancer is a curse and the devastation it leaves behind is awful, if you feel in any way under the weather or tired get checked out at your GP immediately, don’t leave it get to the stage where you feel pain as by then it can be too late like me.

I hope to raise awareness with this story, I am not looking for sympathy, just looking to give hope and for the next challenge to embrace and overcome.

My body is taking longer to recover than I first thought and still after many months I am having problems eating, I am still weak and frequently ill. I occupy myself by trying to read in bed and just being grateful to be alive even if I cannot do much.

I would like to sincerely thank my wonderful friends, family, genuine neighbours, colleagues, amazing hospital staff in Germany and Ireland without their support, I wouldn’t be where I am today!  You know who you are!

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully you will get yourself screened as soon as possible, don’t put it off!

Please feel free to contact me anytime either by leaving a comment or filling out the online form, sometimes just having someone to talk to who has been through it and came out the other side helps.

I don’t want anyone to get cancer but to prevent it instead. If you are interested in the path I chose then please check out my useful resources page.