Saturday 18th August

Hello,

Think I should start by saying sorry for my absence from here lately but my head has been in a bit of a mess. So let’s go back an fill in some of the gaps…

My MDT (multidisciplinary team) were meant to be discussing my biopsy and CT results on Friday 3rd August and I spent the day hoping to get some news, which never came. I spent all day on Friday trying to get through to my macmillan nurse, oncologist, urologist and all of their secretaries to no avail. I waited until 7 that evening before i gave up hope of hearing any news.
I then blogged on Sunday 5th August and said how I was expecting my results the next day and spent the whole day panicking as to what they might say. Monday morning finally came round and I was under strict instructions not to upset any of the secataties by constantly harassing them for answers. I decided to give them untill 11am to ring me but as expected I broke at 10:12 and started trying to get through to the same people as Friday. After about ten minutes of leaving messages, listening to hold music and speaking to secretary secretaries I finally got hold of the oncologists P.A who told me that due to the pathologist going on holiday my results wouldn’t be ready until Friday.
This hit my wife, my family and myself hard. We had spent, what felt like years waiting for the news and due to someone’s annual leave, our lives were put on hold for longer.
Everyday got harder and harder and my head started running away with me more and more. I was also pussuaded to attend the local wound clinic as I had started becoming more mobile. I was still being seen daily by district nurses and then daily at the wound clinic until I was fitted with a negative pressure device, which looks likes a handbag connected to 6ft of tubing eventually ending up in my new belly button. It doesn’t hurt but is very much an inconvenience. Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m a clumsy bastard and I now leave my ‘man bag’ hanging beside my bed, run for a wee and wonder why I get bungee’d back to we’re I started.
Anyway, where was I? See my heads gone again!!!
The good thing from the NHS point of view is I have now freed up a little time for the wonderful district nurses (who I actually miss!!) and now attend my local wound clinic every other day (who are also a lovely bunch of caring individuals).

So Friday eventually came round and at 12:31 I started trying to get through to the people in the know. It took an agonising 15 minutes until I actually got through to someone and it was my Macmillan nurse who said, ‘oh, Mr Laker, I have so good news but let me just double check before I tell you, o.k, I’m amazed and relieved to tell you that it wasn’t cancer, in fact it was a trauma that cause a number of severe clots all in the same place’. This news amazed me, my wife was by my side and as she told me I wrote it all down so Louise could see exactly what I was being told. Lou immediately broke down, grinning from ear and tears streaming off of her beautiful face. My mum and step Dad was also down to be here to support us and there was then a few tears all round. I promptly cracked open a beer and tried taking it all in, after all, I had spent weeks coming to terms with losing a ball, having a nasty infection and having been told that I had cancer.
I had spent weeks trying to remain positive and planning a new start if and when I got the all clear and for days found myself very low. I know I sound very stupid by saying getting the all clear made me depressed but I can only guess it was relief!

One thing I haven’t mentioned during blogging is that through this all, I was meant to have moved house, not just round the corner but 90 miles away to the north Essex coast. I was asked by my GP to stay local until the op was out the way and until I had completed any therapy I may have needed so all of our plans had also been put on hold which also increased the financial pressure on us.

Good news is, today is my third whole day out of bed, I’m still on strong pain killers but our new start happens on Monday so I intend to carry on getting better, to start trying shift some flubber and make the most of our new chapter. I have gone through a crazy time in the last couple of months and am now looking at focusing on the positives of life.

One thing i will say is, considering a little over a year ago we had nearly 100 people come to our wedding, we have really found out who our friends are. Friends and family we thought we were close to have been nowhere to be seen and if the wedding was to happen again most of those who came would never be invited again. But what i can say is that a lot of strangers have help us both more than most of our friends. I truly can’t thank you all enough for your kind messages, support and advice and will do my best to campaign for more awareness of male cancer’s in the future.

On the off chance of anyone reading this and wanting advice on who to go to for support or anyone worth following on twitter, please ask as I have found to many to last individually.

Friday 10th August

I can’t think properly about anything at the moment but I must tell you, I have had your attention unnecessarily …… I have had a bad week and will update on everything tomorrow but all you should know is. I WAS THAT 0.01% the doctors spoke about, I HAVEN’T GOT CANCER!!
Found out a little while ago, thanks for all your thoughts, sympathy and support.

Sunday 5th August

I have left the blogging alone for a few days as each day has been pretty much the same, full of discomfort, mood swings and a massive lack of energy.
When I say mood swings, I’m not being moody with others but my mind is getting more and more distressed in the build up to this weeks results. As far as i know my multi disciplinary team met on Friday to discuss my biopsy results and C.T scan images to decide what is next for me.
I tried ringing them up until 7pm Friday to see if I could find anything out but I was unsuccessful, so again, this weekend has been playing the waiting game. This is a perfect example of my mood swings, I can be sat feeling reasonably positive believing that I will prove my consultants wrong and it wont be cancerous and the next minute I’m planning my last days.
I have wanted to blog but because my family and a number of lovely twitter people follow my blog, I’ve been too scared to actually put down in words my fears but I’m sure you can all guess them!

As for my current health condition, I’m getting more mobile, the infection knocked the crap out of me. My scar is open at all times now and packed with between 46 and 65 cm lengths of packing, my dressing and packing is cleaned and changed by a district nurse once a day and my lovely wife changes the dressing every afternoon as the blood starts coming through all the bandages. I am awaiting the results which will hopefully be tomorrow but if I need chemo, I won’t be allowed it as I have an open wound, so they might be referring me for VAC therapy which will involve my wound being connected to a small electrical unit which will be on 24hours a day to stimulate tissue growth!

Anyway, I’m downstairs (which is rare) and want to watch Fireman Sam with my lil’un.

Will let you all know when I do.

Tuesday 31st July

Don’t really know where to start so will do the best I can.
I found my last two blog pages the hardest to write, I had no motivation to write it and couldn’t see what the point in writing them was. I have had some family mention that it had shown as there was multiple punctuation and grammatical errors which is apparently ‘unlike me’.
So today I will try harder to keep my composure.

The end of last week was very hard, my head a certainly taken a sinister turn and there was no positivity in there at all. I didn’t put two and two together at the time but looking back, at the same time as getting low, I was becoming more immobile and experiencing more pain.
When Saturday night came round I asked Lou how my wound was looking as it was feeling ever so sore and painful and when she looked my pubic area had swollen. We thought this was probably just the bruising and crap coming out and decided to see how it went. That was the case until approx 2:30am Sunday, I had struggled to get to sleep and awoke 55minutes after falling asleep to find a suspicious mess on the bed sheets. I felt very embarrassed as I wasn’t sure weather it was urine or something else (use your imagination.) thankfully my son woke up and Lou went running in which left me time to investigate in privacy and to my surprise there was a bloody coloured mess. Lou walked in and sore it/smelt it and thought I’d pooped the bed. We had a brief chat for literally seconds when I realised I needed a wee. I had a wee successfully still not really panicked by the mess but when I finished washing my hands, I had a strange sensation a thought I was wetting myself but as I looked down it was blood, hot, smelly, pussy blood and lots of it. I shouted to Lou to call an ambulance and that’s when things became even more crazy. The 999 ambulance call handler was very stern and was being very abrupt with me, one of the questions she asked was, ‘how many cups of blood have you lost?’, I replied I hadn’t been catching it in cups but suggested at least one cup. During this 7 minute phone call, Lou was packing bags, sorting out the boys and keeping an eye on me, as I was apparently completely white including my lips. The very ‘lovely’ call handler told me to go straight to my GP’s practice which made me promptly reply, ‘it’s 3am Sunday f@cking morning and I have blood p!ssing out everywhere’, she eventually decided to send an ambulance and it showed up about 25 minutes later! By this time the bathroom floor was soaked in this sticky blood and I was soaked from the waist down, the ambulance guys told me before they saw me that it was a nasty infection as they could smell it from downstairs. I got wrapped up (with a flipping sanitary towel) and was taken straight into A&E. There was a 4 hour ambulance entrance A&E waiting time which I skipped and was taken straight into the surgical assessment unit again which is where I spent the next 13 hours being cleaned, watched and rigged up to drips including pain relief and ‘the strongest antibiotic available’. I won’t bore you with the details but I had a large infection and it had pushed open my scar, about the length of a 50 pence piece and it oozed out and subsequently got squeezed out every few hours. I was kept in that nice and was released at 5 last night with daily visits from district nurses and a million more tablets.
Today was my C.T scan I have managed to walk more than 6 feet today for the first time in 10 days.
C.T is now done and all I have to do is wait a week and I’ll know everything.

Louise and our friend Charlotte have been absolutely amazing and I’m so grateful to them,, my family and you lot for keeping me going.

It’s 17:45 and I’m nodding off! Catch up soon.

P.s my wife *DESERVES* a honour from the queen for putting up with me.

UPDATED:- I originally said wife ‘demands’ when I meant deserves and I have been questioned as to the spelling of pussy and all I can say is, PUSS(y) (ie)

Thursday 26th July

Good afternoon,

I haven’t been here blogging for a couple of days as things have gotten somewhat on top of me. My first night back home was a very strange one. I Was very uncomfortable and tired and fell asleep about 11p.m but was woken back up by the pain at 2:23a.m, I took my painkillers but failed to get back to sleep until just after 6am yesterday morning. I woke back up at about 11 a.m and again woke up very sore and very low.
I’ve been on antidepressants since December 2006 and have been going through ups and downs ever since which has amazed me how strong I have stayed through this latest chapter, but yesterday this all changed. I wasn’t absolutely beside myself but things had definatly caught up with me. The tears were on and off for some time until I fell asleep again. I woke up about 5pm and was a lot calmer but sadly last night was pretty much the same, I was in bed by 10:30 and was still awake at 5!
The only positive from this is I’ve had time to check out male cancer charities.

For example, look at this T-shirt

Available along with many more witty items from http://store.ballstocancer.co.uk/index.php/

I’ve also been enquiring with Orchid Cancer http://www.orchid-cancer.org.uk/ to see if I can help out with either of these charities when I’m better.

I’m already wearing my Orchid Cancer wrist band and badges,

I have now got my CT scan for next Tuesday morning to see if the cancer has spread and between all the different specialist it looks as if the following Tuesday I will know once and for all what I’m dealing with!

Tuesday 24th July

Well I’ve been back home now for nearly three hours and it’s so nice to be home.
So, I’ll do a brief over view of what happened yesterday.

Taxi was booked for 6:20 but arrived late as it went to the wrong bloody road.
Got I to ward by 6:45 where we had to sit in the waiting room.
Got shown to my chair (should’ve been a bed) by 7:05 and was given final pre-op check.
About ten minutes later I was given some rather fetching stockings to put on plus the usual bum exposing gown.
Then I just had to wait for my surgeon, consultant and anaesthetist to come round and then I was off. All though yesterday was my sixth operation so far, it’s the first time I’ve actually walked myself in which was quite a surreal experience. I was the asked to lay down by three lovely ladies who went on to wire me up to all the machines, inserted a cannula and had some pretty funny banter with them. Anyone who actually knows me, knows that I have a big problem with putting my foot in it and within seconds of being in this room with the ladies they asked how I had come to have a titanium plate in my leg, my response was ‘a bloody woman driver knocked me off a motorbike on my 15th birthday’, they immediately asked I repeated the beginning part, so I did and it appears they didn’t take well to me stereotyping women drivers……..lol!

Anyway before o knew it I was in recovery where I had to stay for about 5 hours as there wasn’t a space free on the ward. I knew that this would be increasing Louise’s anxiety and I asked if they could let her know I was fine and being delayed. The nurses told me to call her and assumed I had taken a mobile into theatre with me! (like you do)
So they gave me their phone and I rang her and tried telling her I was fine.

I got onto the ward at about 4:30 and was very relieved to see my beautiful wife waiting for me with a huge smile on her face and to my surprise my mum was down too!

I had been told I should be released the same day but due to me experiencing more pain than expected during the operation I was given a large amount of morphine which prevented me from being let home. At 8:00 I was left alone as the visiting hour had ended and I was then given time to think about things and come to grips with everything that has happened in the last 4 weeks and two days. It was a long night, I was woken up,a number of times by an elderly man who kept screaming, ‘stop it’, ‘your trying to kill me’ etc etc, which was nice to be hearing. I was in my own room and so was he about 5 rooms down from me and with both mine and his doors shut up I manged to hear all this word. For word.
I eventually got back to sleep and was woken just before 7 for blood pressure checks and was seen
about 8:4ps5 by my surgeon came onto ward and also told me it is going to be 14 days for biospsy results with a CT scans in the mean time.

Its been a long couple of days and I’m so tired, so, fogs bye rim me toady.

Would again like to thank @loupielooloo (my wife), my mum, dad, Paul, Colleen, sam and phil and trish and Colin for all your help, plus all you people who keep contacting us with messages of support.

Back soon

Sunday 22nd July

I’m now 12 hours away from leaving for hospital and the nerves are setting in, big time! I know tomorrow won’t be nice or pain free but it’s going to be the two week period in between the testicle being removed and the biopsy result which I think I’m fearing more.
So far I have probably had 30+ men who have been where I am now offering me words of comfort and advice which has been greatly reassuring but one lady in particular has given me hope, as her son was told he had testicular cancer but when they biopsied it turned out to be benign. O.k so to be fair, her son is the only one out of over 30 who have been diagnosed but I can’t help but cling to the thought that this could all be nothing.
The surgeons and Macmillan nurse have made it clear that fatherhood will not be ruled out through tomorrows operation but from what I’ve read, the chemo afterwards is a different matter. The words ‘sperm banking’ keeps coming up, (bad choice of words I know) but this isn’t giving me a lot of reassurance!!
The real question that strikes fear in me the most is, has it spread? If so what then?

Like I said yesterday, I can and will be this but it doesn’t stop the mind from thinking and fearing.

Anyone, must go, bags to pack………

Will update as soon as possible, should be day surgery but who knows?

HAVE FUN