I was diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer, but eight years on I’m cancer free

My first meeting with the oncologist was the worst. I remember him saying, “You need to prepare yourself that this may not be a positive outcome. The only thing I can do is put you on chemotherapy, because it’s inoperable.”

This was at the hospital in Cheltenham, where I was referred after the initial tests at my local hospital, the Hereford Nuffield. My wife was with me and she was very tearful. Then he said, “I’m sorry, these results are typical of tumours in your liver. You’ve got seven of them. The biggest is 5cm.” That was May 2016.

But just over a year later in July 2017, everything had changed. The tumours had shrunk and they were able to operate on my liver. The surgeon who operated on me said, “It’s quite phenomenal.” My liver was cancer-free. It was what he called a “complete response”, and out of 1,250 patients he had only ever seen it in six people. We were obviously elated. He sent me to the bowel specialist who went looking for the primary cancer and he couldn’t find a trace of it in my bowel either, despite this thing having been measured and having pictures of it. Again, it was a complete response – the first he’d seen at that time.

It was the best result we could have hoped for. It had been the worst year of my life and I could hardly believe it.

The first diagnosis

To go back to the beginning: I was 44 and I’d been experiencing symptoms – I had a pain above my hip, which I put down to a hockey injury, and was sometimes getting blood in my stools. I’d been to the GP but they hadn’t been worried because I was fit and healthy. Eventually I had a private doctor through the health scheme from my company, Colliers, who referred me for a sigmoidoscopy – similar to a colonoscopy with a camera on a tube, but only in the lower part of the bowel. The surgeon said that we needed to wait for the results but he told us there and then that it looked like I had aggressive cancer.

I’m quite strong, but you do feel like you’re under a sudden pressure. You don’t want to be there. It just feels like a weight on you. I just said to my wife, “Come on, we’re going home.” The diagnosis was confirmed a week later. Then we discovered that the bowel cancer had metastasised to the liver.

When the oncologist at Cheltenham told me to prepare for the worst, he did reassure me that I was fit and that this would help me hugely when it came to coping with the treatment. I had 16 rounds of chemo in the end.

I’m quite a positive person and although it wouldn’t be everyone’s choice I posted on Facebook that I’d been diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly there was an onslaught of advice. Fifty people must have said: “Get a sports car, go on holiday.”

But two pieces really stood out. One was a friend from my local village who said, “I know this cancer nutritional therapist. She’s brilliant. She’s got a fellowship in cancer care. You need to speak to her.” The other was a guy from my work whose dad’s friend had exactly the same thing and went on a drug called cetuximab. I asked my oncologist about it and he explained that it was a monoclonal antibody drug, which seeks out and destroys cancer cells, but is only suitable in 50 per cent of cases. I was tested and came back suitable and the oncologist explained that they would administer it at the same time as my other infusion drugs.

A diet to complement chemotherapy

I also got in touch with the nutritional therapist, Jo Gamble. At first I admit I did think, “Oh, she’s just another nutritionist.” But after a bit of research I discovered that she trained in the US in functional medicine and has a fellowship in integrative oncology – she explained that this uses holistic therapies and nutrition alongside conventional cancer treatments to “improve health and minimise the side effects of conventional treatment”.

We spoke regularly on the phone. Jo said she was going to use diet to boost my immune system during treatment. She said I could still have cheese, but it would be ewe or goat’s cheese. I could drink milk, but it wouldn’t be dairy, it would be coconut milk or oat milk. I also had to get away from anything that had refined sugars in or that had been processed significantly. I would be having vegetables with some fruit shakes in the morning. And she was very much about organic root vegetables, reducing red meats, very much white meats, white fish, things like organic kale.

My wife was amazing. She took over and changed everything about our routine. The kids were still on the chicken nuggets and pizza, but suddenly I was eating a different meal to everyone else. The aim was never to replace the treatment but always to maximise the impact of the chemotherapy and the antibody drug through nutrition.

My daily diet

The chemo made me feel awful – nauseous, with diarrhoea. I couldn’t sleep after an intravenous session – my eyes felt like they were on stalks. All the time I was doing chemo I was carrying on with the antibody treatment and the advice from Jo.

A typical day’s food was very plain steamed organic vegetables and a piece of organic chicken, no sauce. The emphasis was on fresh vegetables, lean protein, olive oil and supplements such as vitamin D for my immune system. Protein is really important for building blocks, it builds all your new blood cells, DNA cells and immune cells. Good fats like olive oil help with reducing inflammation, plus lots of plant-based nutrients.

One thing that Jo was also very keen to get into my body was turmeric because she said turmeric is anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer. I think she’d suggested boiling coconut milk with some ginger in it – a tablespoon of this warm drink was very much like drinking a horrible, milky chicken korma. So I ended up cooking my own curry. I made my own recipe as a way of getting turmeric into my system.

The treatment period

My new diet was good on one level but combined with chemo, antibody treatment and other medications it was a very difficult period. The oncologist and the nutritionist monitored me regularly. I was completely focussed on getting better. I carried on working but my employer was very understanding, so I could stick rigidly to a routine. I never missed a tablet. The nurses who gave me my treatment at home said it was surprising how many people give tablets back as they just haven’t managed to take them.

The lowest point was when I lost my hair. I noticed it gathering at the bottom of the shower. But rather than letting it throw me off course, I just thought, I’m going to shave it off. One of my friends said he would shave his hair off at the same time. We did it in his kitchen. You’re in a very lonely place with cancer and this was hugely positive.

I remember vividly walking into the office for the first time without hair and everyone turning to look at me. I can only imagine what that would be like for a child – that’s why I now support this cancer charity, the Little Princess Trust, which funds research into childhood cancers and also funds real-hair wigs for children. A child gets the choice of three wigs – they choose one and it gets taken to a stylist, and they have it styled as they want it.

Positive results

The thing that kept me going was that my results were constantly improving. My three-monthly scans showed improvement each time. After 10 months of chemo and the antibody drug, the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham confirmed that my liver had become operable. I was given surgery on my liver and then two months later I got the all-clear. A month after that the bowel surgeon did a full colonoscopy looking to take away the primary cancer and couldn’t find it.

I will never know whether it was the chemo, the antibody drug, the diet, the positivity or the sticking to my regimen that worked for me. It was probably all of it. But after a terrifying prognosis I feel healthy and fit and have been clear for almost eight years. During the treatment you do backload the emotion. It was like training for an Olympics event and you park any of that. With the children we tried to carry on as normal but still had this weight of pressure. You have to try to be positive for everyone around you. After I got the all-clear we started to appreciate life a lot more. You’re thankful every day you open the curtains and you’re still there.

As told to Miranda McMinn

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