How to Reduce the Number of Your People Dying of Cancer in New Zealand Even Though You are not a Doctor

Yesterday we flew to Wellington and drove over the windy Rimutakas for a funeral of a friend and family member who died of cancer on Monday. It all started with a lump in her breast, it ended with tumors in her spine and brain. A prognosis of months became days.

One of the people who spoke lost her husband late last year to cancer, she spoke with raw emotion of how life changing and devastating it still is to her. Several other people there had experience and have lost people to cancer or who are battling it. Five of the speakers shared the following words, driven by raw emotion “Fuck Cancer”. I think that’s the first time I have ever sworn in a blog and I don’t apologise.

I invite a comment from each of you who don’t know someone who has lost the fight with cancer or is battling it right now. Tell me that’s you and I will be thrilled for you. 1 in 3 Kiwis will get cancer. It doesn’t have to kill a third of our population. If you were told you had a 1 in 3 chance of winning lotto, would you go and buy a ticket?

I also spoke briefly about my journey. I’m one of the lucky ones because I’m in remission and she was one of the ones who was looking out for me and giving me moral support. It’s people like her (and another Shelley who has chemo every 3 weeks and had to sell her Auckland home to live in the country to cover the difference between what her insurer was paying and what she had to find to cover the cost of her teatment, that helped me get to remission.

In one of my songs for The Cancer Diaries EP, I wrote, “Isn’t it ironic, that the people you use as a tonic, are worse of than you?”

Our 2018 singlets have just arrived. The 18 for 2018 is made up of the names of people living and sadly passed away who we are walking or running for on 10-11 March 2018. The day after my birthday.

She was also active on my Facebook Page Musicians with Cancer and other Maladies. She was also a great supporter of Relay For Life which as you may know, we are walking for 18 hours on the 10th and 11th of March at the Millenium Institute of Sport on the North Shore.

We talk about cancer being about OLD people. Many people say it is the Baby Boomers who spent too much time in the sun, smoking and covering their bodies in baby oil. But when I look around, I see a wide mix of people. Toddlers with Leukemia, teenagers with bowel cancer, people like myself and my friends who are (or were still working and expecting to for at least another 10 years. How about the younger people who have lived on a diet of processed foods, preservatives and the many other flavour enhancers documented on the packaging. Of course you don’t see those on the packaging of the fast food many people live on. Would you eat your favorite fast food if the packaging looked like the packaging on a pack of cigarettes? Imagine if they had pictures of obese people, diabetics and those with heart problems caused by eating processed food, along with ALL of the ingredients.

At the wake, after the funeral yesterday everyone had a cancer story and a common thread of discussion was about getting tested before you have symptoms and the time to get tested was typically agreed for people with no symptoms of around 30-40 years of age.

We talked about diet and lifestyle.Those are things that we have control to do something about. Getting tested early is no doubt what saved my life. I had no symptoms that I was aware of and it was a simple blood test that led to my diagnosis.

My friend, Colleague and supporter Lee, who continues to battle her ‘terminal’ diagnosis contacted me  told me I needed to watch a Netflix documentary called The C Word, starring Morgan Freeman. She said that she felt if she had watched it a year ago, she would still be working and not facing a death sentence. I imagine if you followed the learnings from the move and never got cancer.

I watched the movie with her recommendation. If you don’t have Netflix, you might find it on YouTube or elsewhere. If you were told you have a 1 on 3 likelihood of getting cancer, would you do anything different? Well I’ve told you now, those are your odds. What if helping out the Cancer Society with a small donation would help speed up some exciting world leading cancer research as well as help people who have been already been diagnosed with everything from free counselling, free support groups and even somewhere to stay when you have to stop work and travel away from home for treatment, also for free, which is a big deal if you can’t work and get paid during that time.

It’s taken me a long time to come to grips with the fact that there are some key things I have needed to change in my life. The key ones are, more fresh foods of more colours, more exercise, even when it’s hard to even get your body out of bed, attitude particularly avoiding bad stress (stress that is negative in nature and people who bring it) and having positive things to look forward to. I’m feeling really good now that I’m in remission. That wasn’t the case 2 years ago, but I’m a fighter and a survivor.

These days I focus on these things, but not to the level I need to. I still let things and people get to me, but I focus on what I can control. Right now I’m focused on having a first flying lesson next week and Relay For Life on 10/11 March (which comes with a need for donations, which is where I need your help.) Buddy can you spare a dime? I am really struggling to reach my target this year and all I need is some of my friends and readers to help me with $5 by going here. What can you get for $5? You might be able to save a life. Seriously, even by just discussing Relay and getting tested for cancer with friends you could make a difference.

Twenty people, that’s right 20 PEOPLE got tested because I raised the topic and even if some of them had been thinking about it, I helped tipped them over the edge. What’s even more cool is that not one of them has cancer. Wouldn’t you like to know you don’t have cancer?

Here’s a statistic for you. In the USA, around 38% of people WILL get cancer. How do you like those odds? Here are a few more stats from Medicines in New Zealand:

1. New Zealand’s Cancer Rates are over 62% higher than the world average.
2. New Zealand’s mortality rate exceeds Australia’s average by 8%.
3. While survival is improving, New Zealand’s survival rates are less than Australia and US.
4. Compared to Australia, New Zealand has much higher rates of avoidable cancer deaths.
5. Out of 13 countries, New Zealand has the lowest ranking for access to cancer medicines
6. New Zealand only funds 14% of highly effective available medicines for the 8 most prevalent cancer types.

This view on the flight home (no filters used)  last night was a fitting tribute to our friend Shelley who didn’t make it. It reminded me of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan singing The Sky is Crying.

While you are thinking about whether a slight lifestyle change is worth considering, or that like the 60% of people who won’t get cancer (by today;s stats) it won’t happen to you or yours, how about helping out those of us who will be spending 18 hours walking around the track at Millenium Institute on 10th and 11th of March by donating $5 to our team. I need 241 more donations. If all of you who read my blogs made that small donation, we could blitz it together. It’s easy and it’s tax deductible. Please do it today. It will make a difference.

If your loved one isn’t already on our shirts, we will be very happy to walk in their honor if you give me their names.  We are also open for more team members or even just come and walk a lap with us. We will remember them.

Prostate Cancer, Gory Details, Treatment Choices and Relay For Life, Can You Help?

A sign we walk past during the night in Relay For Life

I’m writing this blog to ask for your help in raising awareness and fundraising for Relay For Life, to support the Cancer Society in raising funds they need both for cancer research and to support people who need help, from counseling to transport and even free accommodation when people have to travel out of town for treatment.

The Cancer Society is funding research amongst others in the area of treating cancer like a virus, which is showing a lot of promise and would mean that people like me in future might not have to go through the treatments and processes I went through.

Can you spare $5 in support or in memory of a friend or family member with cancer. You can do so here. You can do it with a message, you can leave your name or mention the person you are supporting, you can do it anonymously and if you are in New Zealand it is tax deductible. I’ll bet that you, dear reader, know at least one person who has cancer. Several of you of course know me, so there’s one.

Like my previous blog, if I get some donations, I will spare you some of the gory details that we prostate cancer patients have to deal with.

I would dearly welcome your donation, I’m struggling in receiving them this year. Where I am doing well, is that the number of people who have told me that they have been motivated to get tested for cancer has now risen to 20! Every single one of them is cancer free and more importantly know so and have baselines.

So in my last blog, I spared you the gory details of the first visits to the urologist and trading my dignity for hope.  Now I am going to offer to spare you details of some of the side effects of prostate cancer treatment, some of which I endured and some of which I chose not to risk. I had to make decisions based on choosing life (if possible) and the most suitable treatment for my lifestyle and work.

Some of those side effects included painful urination, short term or permanent erectile dysfunction, never producing seminal fluid again, the length of your penis being reduced, damage to other organs, chronic fatigue, loss of libido and depression. Some of these are experienced by most prostate patients and some depend on the choice of treatment, which of course depending on the seriousness of the condition may not be optional if you want to live. It’s also important to recognise that everyone responds differently to different treatment.

The next steps were a series of biopsies. I’ll spare you the details of how they do that for prostate cancer other than that they approach it from behind. Initially they found 3 tumors and confirmed that they were malignant. Then over the next few months, scans and 2 more biopsies confirmed that I had at least 5 and they were slow growing.

They gave me 3 options. One was to implant radioactive seeds into my prostate a treatment called Brachytherapy. Here’s more if you’d like to know more about how it works. I decided against it because it meant staying away from my granddaughter and pregnant women for about 6 months. Besides not wanting to change my relationship with my beautiful young granddaughter, how do you know if someone in your circle, or even randomly sitting next to you, say on a plane, is pregnant? They might not know themselves.on

Basically you are emitting radiation, which while not powerful, could have unintended side effects for others. The percentage likelihood, very slim, but percentages weren’t working well for me at this time and I wasn’t going to have on my conscience that I could be sitting next to a random stranger, potentially damaging a foetus she didn’t even know existed. Obviously some people do that. You can’t exactly hop on a flight and ask not to be seated next to a young girl going through puberty or a woman of an age that she could be pregnant and perhaps not know it.

The urologist was keen on this option. It would mean a quick procedure and a couple of days later I would be home. It would have minimal impact on my work, but given part of my work is reasonably frequent air travel and what I just told you, it wasn’t a great option. It was a treatment he would perform with my oncologist, who I had yet to meet. Specialists tend to favor opportunities for surgery or treatment that is their specialty of course and I respect that.

The next option was 8 weeks of almost daily radiation on this beast, which includes a CT scanner which would first make sure that every morning, after drinking enough water to fill my bladder and push my organs out of reach of the radiation (where possible), that I was lying in an identical position.

It would give me a 95% chance of killing the tumours. They could accomodate me so that I could go in first thing in the morning, if I got up early and have the treatment before work. They could do it over December and January as well so that would mean 3 weeks where it did not impact on my job.

The third option was to remove the prostate altogether, so if the tumours haven’t spread beyond the gland (pretty difficult to tell), they might get it altogether.

At this point I felt I needed to be informed. What were the risks, benefits and side effects? I thought back to watching Sir Paul Holmes on TV before he passed away from Prostate Cancer in 2013, saying that he wished he had never known he had cancer at all.

So how do you choose? I purchased a book called ‘Winning the Battle Against Prostate Cancer, Get The Treatment That is Right For You‘ by Dr Gerald Chodak. Oh how I wish I hadn’t bought the book, but I’m the sort of person who needs to understand.

It explained in gory detail how the different treatments worked (including some chemical treatments that we hadn’t discussed). Every treatment came with side effects and after effects. I hardly got any sleep for the week it took me to read this book. It scared the hell out of me and whilst you need to be positive, as stress has an impact on your body’s ability to fight cancer cells, it’s pretty hard to make an informed decision that WILL impact the rest of your Teamlife without being informed. I chose the book over Doctor Google, because it was recommended by cancer patient support groups.

So in the end I chose the 8 weeks of radiation and yes it had lots of side effects. Most of these are now over, 2 years later, but I’d be lying if I said it had been easy. If you’d like the gory details, please don’t pop $5 into my Early Bird account.

Naked barring my socks, each morning I lay on the scanner, watching them mark with a pen, where the beam should go, trying to hold on to my dignity and my full bladder

Unfortunately soon after 2 months of treatment they told me that I wasn’t in the 95% of people who found themselves in remission after the treatment, but I felt very happy for those who were.

I had side effects from the treatment and scans showed the tumours were still there.

I did work on positivity and put my energy into starting my EP The Cancer Diaries following suppRelaort from my friends when I didn’t have the emotional strength to pick up my guitars or play them. I also took up the offer of free counselling from an Auckland Cancer Society specialist cancer psychologist, one of the services funded by your donations. If you haven’t heard the DEMO of the first song called If I Could Turn The Pages, you can listen to it here.

I hope you don’t want the gory details and will find $5 to shut me up although if you have prostate cancer, or want to know more about getting tested or the journey you are facing, I’m happy to share my experiences with any individuals on request.

Several people have found it helpful to speak to someone who has cancer rather than well meaning people, who haven’t had the experiences or had to make difficult decisions.

Our 2018 singlets have just arrived. The 18 for 2018 is made up of the names of people living and sadly past who we are walking or running for on 10-11 March. The day after my birthday.

So instead of encouraging me to talk in more detail about the physical and emotional experiences I’ve been through in the last 2 years, please drop a couple of coins in the virtual bucket and lets celebrate life and hope and support Relay For Life 18 with my team. The Early Birds.

Prostate Cancer. No Pressure. Need Help for Relay For Life 2018.

So when my GP told me that my PSA levels had increased every test over the last couple of years when they should fluctuate, he said there was a risk that I might have cancer. He told me to lie up on the bed in his surgery, pull my pants down and my legs up and before I had a chance to ask, “is this necessary?”, his gloved finger went where the sun don’t shine. To say that it was unpleasant was an understatement, but I barely had time to feel embarrassed.

We wasted no time in making an appointment with a urologist and off I reluctantly went. I’m not sure what I was dreading most, being told I had cancer (If I did) or having yet more insult and injury to my dignity.

A sign on the track at Relay For Life

He was a very nice, gentleman who explained to me what was going to next and asked if I had any questions. I was feeling pretty much in shock and bewildered and was barely taking in what he said.

He asked me what my flow pressure was like when I peed. I thought it was OK most of the time. They told me on the phone that I had to arrive with a full bladder for a urine pressure test, so I was ready to relieve the pressure.

I had to pee in a basin that had a sensor in it and I thought I did pretty well, as he stood in the next room, watching the gauge. He then burst my bubble and said that my flow was well below average and asked, would I like a script for something that would make it flow faster.

I declined. Up on the bed and he started prodding my stomach and then asked me to pull my pants off, lie on my side with my knees hard up against my chest.

Now dear reader, you may be feeling squeamish, you might be feeling embarrassed, you might be thinking, I’m pulling out of this story.

You might be thinking, why is he telling me this? Is it necessary?

No it isn’t, but I want your help and if I get some donations for our next Relay for Life, I won’t share the next step with you and I won’t tell you graphically how I felt.

People ask why I share my story. I’ll tell you why. All around me people are either battling or losing the fight to cancer. One in 3 people in New Zealand will get cancer and we have to do something about it. We can do something about it. The numbers are pretty similar in the western world.

Relay For Life isn’t just for raising money for cancer research, it is about remembering the people we love, work with, our friends and family who are affected by cancer. It is as much a celebration of life as a sharing of loss.

We walk for 18 hours in relay, and the number 18 on our singlets if you zoom in, you will see it is made up of the names the 13 of us are walking for. Some have passed away in the last few months, some are battling, some have been gone for some time and some are in remission like me.

When you walk around the track and you see an 11 year old in front of you and on the back of his shirt it says ‘I miss you Mummy’, you know why you are there.

So to stop me sharing the rest of this visit to the urologist, how about going to the Relay For Life website here and making a small donation. $5 is tax deductible if you are in New Zealand and it would mean a lot to me to have your support. If you’re overseas, maybe you won’t get a tax rebate for it, but I’d still be very grateful if you could share the cost of a coffee.

These are the bags we put our clothes in, when we go in for radiation treatment. Each one of these bags represents a person being treated for cancer at any given time, just in this clinic

I hate asking for money, but it isn’t for me. It may will help you or someone you care about. Remember that number. 1 person in 3 in New Zealand will get cancer at some stage in their lives. Draw up a little list of people in your family and then separate one third of the names on that list. Imagine if those people got cancer. This is personal folks.

This year Relay is on the 10th and 11th of March. We got through the night to symbolise the cancer journey. You don’t have to walk the whole time, it’s a relay, but many of us like to do as much as we feel able. Our team is quite small this year. So far only 13 people. If you feel you would like to join us please head to the Team Early Birds page and let me or one of the team know.

Will you join us in person or in your thoughts?

Fighting Cancer with my Family and Friends at Relay For Life 17

Greetings friends. This is a special weekend where we remember those people we have lost to cancer over the years and encourage and embrace those of us who are still fighting this horrible disease.

As you can see on the photo, the team that my daughters created is called Early Birds. That’s because those who get tested and find out early that they have cancer are much more likely to survive and have a good outcome than those who don’t. I am so proud to say that due to my pushing over the last year and a bit, 17 people have had PSA tests and as well as knowing they do not have prostate cancer and in one case no breast cancer, they now have a baseline to allow them to catch it early if they do get prostate cancer like me and their survival rate will go up dramatically if they get a little blood test every year.

You will see the number 17 on the back and my daughter’s name on the bottom of the shirt, which was designed and made by her company Empire Promo. The 17 is made up of the names of the people I mentioned above, family and friends that our team is going to spend today honouring, all night and into the morning walking around a track at Millennium Institute on Auckland’s North Shore. You can see there are a lot of names and with a few late additions to the team there would be more if there had been time.

So today and tomorrow we will be walking to honour our people, to help fund research for accessible cures that save lives and don’t require that people sell their homes to pay for treatment, have somewhere to stay if they are coming to Auckland from out of town, like some of the great people I met when I was having radiation treatment at Mercy Hospital, and to thank those of you who donated to our cause, for your generosity. Whilst we do enjoy the event, the camaraderie and activities, we are here for only one reason, which is to save lives.

If you are one of the many people who donated to my account I want to thank you sincerely for your contribution. This is my 4th Relay and my second as a cancer patient. I am 25% short on my target of $1,000. If you would still like to donate, it isn’t too late and you can do so on my Relay For Life page here. I suspect most of you donated either for me (which is very humbling) and/or because of challenges you and people you care about have faced with cancer. I will dedicate laps to each of you and yours and especially to some very good friends who are still fighting the fight and aren’t in a condition to make it today. You know who you are.

I am planning to post a Facebook Live video at some stage so those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will be able to see a little of the event. For the rest, I will put something on YouTube after the event so you can see it too.

I won’t go on. You can follow me on Twitter under the handle of BluesBro, there will be some photos and tweets there as the weekend goes on. If you see them, please let me know. It would be great to share the event with you.

I do also want to send out a special thanks to my friends and colleagues at the New Zealand Transport Agency and Auckland Transport who have supported me in so many ways to date including donations, but much more than that. It hasn’t been the easiest of years and with awesome people giving me encouragement and helping me out during the tougher times, it has given me strength and Hope. 

Give me Strength on my Cancer Journey

One of my friends kindly donated to my Relay For Life  event this morning which runs on the 25th and 26th of March and he made a comment to me which was “Stay Strong”.

 

I wanted to share my reply to him with you. My beautiful granddaughter gave me this rock to put a smile on my face.

 

I literally carry it in my pocket every day to represent strength and when I’m tired or having a tough day (which is pretty much when I’m tired which is most days) I give it a squeeze and feel the strength and solidity of this empathetic gift.

 

It is like a taonga to me. Maybe a little of her tiny bit of her Maori ancestry will rub off it into me; as she can trace her lineage to the canoe Mataatua. It’s not a magic bullet, but I feel love, hope and strength in this little rock, just as I feel it from my friends and family who have donated to my Relay For Life campaign and in many other ways.

 

My granddaughter at one of our first Relay’s. The bag which she decorated contains an LED candle representing hope and remembering loved ones who had or have cancer.

Over the last couple of years I have learned about the strength that comes from having a network of people who care for each other, like those who still send me text messages encouraging me to play guitar. They have been so successful that I have written my second cancer related song and have been playing every day, but because I haven’t had the energy to play for the last year, even an average of 10 minutes every day has given me a bit of tendonitis and with a jam session coming up in a few weeks that I am really looking forward to, I am having to give it a rest for a few days.

I get messages like this every day

I get messages like this every day.

I don’t want to name names, but you know who you are, there are a number of very close friends and a colleague who are way worse off than I am with their battles with cancer and ironically they are right there supporting me. I hope that I have been able to help them a little as well.

I’d like to finish with a little story and I know I get long winded, sorry:) I had two days this week when I really shouldn’t have gone to work, but I had really important meetings. Anyway on Friday I decided to do a little meditation on HeadSpace. I’m not good at meditation and I’m on day 3 of a 10 day program I started a couple of months ago.

So anyway, I go down to the carpark at 2PM for a quick 10 minutes of meditation. About 25 minutes later I get woken up by a very concerned colleague tapping on my window who saw me sitting in my car with my eyes closed and wanted to check if I was OK. Again, that’s another example of the support that is so important and I really appreciate it. As to HeadSpace, the first 10 days are free and you don’t have to use it every day. I like it and understand why so many famous people recommend it. If it works for me, it will work for just about anyone.

So thanks to those of you who are giving me strength with donations to Relay, sending me positive messages or simply asking how I’m doing. For others who are at various stages of your fight with cancer, I am thinking of you, ready to help in any way I can and as I walk around and around the track at the Millennium Centre, your names will be on my lips, in my mind and in some cases on my back on the awesome singlets Empire Promotions have had made for Team Early Birds. Note the number 17 is made up of the names of all the people we are walking for. 

Relay For Life 16 Thank you, Thank you, Thank you

It’s almost over and tomorrow is the start of the big weekend. I want to thank all of you for your amazing support for my journey with prostate cancer and Relay For Life 16 which starts tomorrow.

If you are in the neighborhood, the Opening Ceremony at the Millennium Institute will be at 3:45 PM and I will be one of a small group giving a brief speech, which is a huge honor in part due to the number of you who have donated to our team Early Birds. Following that we have the first lap led by those of us who have been told “You have cancer” and our supporters and partners. It would be great to have you join us if you can.

If you want to come and say hi or walk a lap with us, our tent is at site A8 right on the side of the track on the opposite side to to main Millennium building.

We have dropped to 5th place in the fund raising rankings, being beaten by 3 schools and a bank, which are hard acts to follow as we are just a small group supporting friends and family. But what a great job you have done! For me personally you have donated over $1,500, our team over $6,000 which adds up to about 4% of the total of around $150,000 which will help the Cancer Society save lives and make the journey easier for cancer sufferers like myself.

I want to give a special thanks to Gemma and Tracy, my daughters, who set our team up for me after asking what they could do to help me get through this horrible disease. They have been awesome. Also to Gemma and Mark for the awesome singlet and hoodies they designed and had made. The 16 (for 2016) is made up of the names of the people our team are walking and running for (for 18 hours!), so we can carry those people with us.

It’s not too late to donate $5 if you haven’t already done so, by going to my page at https://aucklandnorthrelayforlife2016.everydayhero.com/nz/luigi. It’s also never too late to go and get a PSA test guys and I am so proud that 13 of you have been motivated by me to go and get tested and as well as all being clear, now have a base line for future tests.

I will be posting pics on my Twitter account https://twitter.com/bluesbro so if you want to stay in touch and see what’s happening and send me some support.

I am very grateful to the Cancer Society for what they do and to your for your support. This isn’t just about supporting the 1 in 3 people in NZ who will be diagnosed with cancer during their lives (think about those numbers in terms of your family, friends and colleagues), it has also been a welcome distraction for me, something to be focused on and excited about.

As I go through this journey it is about having things to look forward to and making the most out of one day at a time. I am working on lots more things to look forward to, but most of all it is about friends and family. Things are cool, but ultimately its about people and you have helped me more than you realise.

I have never been one to ask for help. The support helps me, but the money may help you and yours in the future. The Cancer Society is not funded by taxes, rates or anything other than donations. So this is the last time and I won’t be asking again. If you can spare $5, please do so at https://aucklandnorthrelayforlife2016.everydayhero.com/nz/luigi.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now I have to get to work!!!!

 

Support for Cancer Sufferers and their Families

unI want to say a huge thanks to everyone for their wonderful ongoing support. It has meant the world to me. The cards, text messages, messages on social media from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, phone calls, offers of driving me to and from treatment, somewhere to stay and recover (had an awesome three days with dear friends in Mangawhai over New Year’s when I had 3 days off treatment) have been amazing.

One of the things that took a bit of getting my head around was my family and how my cancer affects them. We have lost some of our closest family members and friends to cancer and I didn’t always appreciate how everyone else in my family was feeling. It’s something I noticed at the hospital that it was often the partners that were really struggling. We patients are more focused on how we are feeling and how to cope with side effects, keeping up at work and on my part feeling guilty for falling asleep at 7PM or earlier every night and going to bed early, leaving my wife on her own, evening after evening for months. I’m still doing that and could be for a little while yet.

After I left the radiation clinic for the last time, with instructions from the nurse, not to come back, which I was happy to agree to, I went to the cafe for my last coffee and cheese scone, staple diet to keep me moving.

Then off to the car to head to work for business as usual. I was feeling disoriented.

For 2 months my life had been focused on getting up around 5:30AM every morning and heading across the bridge for treatment and now it was over. The card from the staff may have been a factor, because it was like leaving your job, something that had become routinely normal. I wandered around a little bit as I headed to the car. I sat there for a little while, looking at the card, looking at the smiley face stamps on my appointment. Thinking about the PSA test in 3 weeks time and wondering what the oncologist would have to say to me when we catch up in a month, especially given that my PSA tests had never shown me to have abnormal levels, despite the tumors. Will I be clear or will I need more biopsies. I don’t like the idea of more biopsies because each one increases the risk, even slightly, that cancer material if there is any left, could then be passed into my bloodstream.

Anyway, got to work and got busy, then when I got home, I found a wonderful message on the front door from 7 year old Madison, which cheered me up immensely.

Mads (and all my family) has been tremendous, she is very empathetic but also great and grounding me.

Then it was off for a family dinner at Genghys Mongolian Restaurant with my family. I took it easy on the food, but the taste sensation  was amazing, even though I stayed away from the garlic and spices as instructed.

The piece de resistance was a cake, totally unexpected given that it wasn’t my birthday, which neighboring diners probably assumed. This brought tears to my eyes after a long two months and long day.

So now we wait and life gets a little back to normal. I still woke up at 5 this morning, but i was able to doze off again. They say its all about attitude and I have always felt that I am a survivor. I have also also felt that I have a guardian angel, my Oma, who had a 20 year battle with cancer (after she was told she would probably not live past the first year).

You don’t get through these things on your own. I’m a bit of a loner when it comes to dealing with stressful situations. Cancer has certainly changed that. I now gratefully accept the good wishes, the offers of support, the prayers and constant goodwill from colleagues, friends, family, acquaintances and total strangers. I’m also extremely aware that I am lucky, there are so many people worse off than me that have amazing strength and great attitudes.

I am focusing a little more on what matters. Family, lifestyle, maybe a little self indulgence to come, because you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labors when you are gone.

My immediate focus beyond my next oncologist appointment is the Auckand Relay For Life. As you may know, my daughters have set up a team called Early Birds, which recognizes that if I hadn’t had those PSA tests, we wouldn’t have known I had cancer. My prognosis would be very different.

I don’t know if I will be able to do the marathon distance I did last time, but I will do what I can and have a great team behind me. Our team isn’t just about me, although it is what I asked for when my daughters asked what they could do to help me. It’s about all the people that we and our friends have lost to cancer and those who like me are battling it still. It is to fund raise for the NZ Cancer Society that only survives through donations, sponsors and events like this.

If you would like to help and support us, you can:

1. Join the team. There are no limits and it really is an awesome 24 hour event.
2. You can make a tax deductible donation. If all my friends donated only $5 (the minimum amount that allows you to claim back against income tax) we would be giving the society a real boost in supporting cancer research as well as facilities like Daffodil House, where some of the patients I met in the clinic were staying for free, and the many other free services they provide like booklets, a library, free counseling and much more, without Government support.
3. Come along for a visit. Especially the survivors laps at the beginning and end of the event. I can promise you a very moving experience with hardly a dry eye in sight.

Thanks again to all of you for your amazing support. I can’t tell you what it means, even just to have a ‘like’ or comment on my blogs and my social media.