Hello, I have cancer

I found out that I have cancer on Wednesday, the 3rd of March, 2010. I think everyone who gets the news probably remembers the date.

It wasn't the last thing I expected to hear though. For the previous month or two, it was there in my mind that I had oesophogeal cancer. I was listening to the radio in the car one day to a doctor who was talking about the increasing incidence of oesophogeal cancer in men aged over 40. I sat there, mentally ticking off the symptoms as the doctor listed them. He said that most people with the disease have trouble swallowing solid food - check - reflux and heartburn - check - the fact that I was going through five bottles of Gaviscon Dual Action a week should have been enough to alert me to the likelihood that something was wrong.

After a while, I decided that as the problem wasn't going away, I should see my local doctor. She referred me to have an gastroscopy. The original appointment was for somewhere near the end of April, six weeks away. Luckily, I asked the receptionist to put me on the cancellations list. They rang me on the next Monday and asked if I could come in on Wednesday, the 3rd of March.

The gastroscopy was uneventful. The debriefing afterwards wasn't. The doctor went straight in and told me that I had an ulcer in my stomach that was causing the reflux and heartburn. He also said that they found a mass at the junction of my stomach and oesophogus. He said "I think it's cancer. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am."

My memory of the rest of the time there is a little hazy, due to the lingering effects of the sedation and maybe being in shock - a bit. Luckily Joseph was there to take it all in.

One of the things I asked was whether I should stop smoking straight away. He said no - due to the stress - which I took to mean that it was probably too late anyway - the horse had bolted.

The next move was an appointment with a surgeon in Dandenong for his opinion. That was a week away. Now the waiting had begun. The next four weeks involved a series of scans, CT, PET and Gated Blood Pool. There was a week of waiting between each scan and then finally to see the surgeon for the staging results.

The results were in. I was glad to hear that it was considered to be a Stage One adenocarinoma, T1 or T2 and that it was curable and that there was no evidence that the cancer had spread beyond the GOJ (Gastro-Oesophogeal Junction). Up until that point, the oncologist had set out both the curative path and the palliative path. I wanted to be on the curative path, of course, and now it was confirmed that I was.

Another week later, I started on a chemotherapy regime called MAGIC ECF. This involves three, three week cycles of chemotherapy, with a long session once every three weeks and a pump attached to a PICC line in my arm which lasts for seven days.

Having chemotherapy before surgery has proven to increase patient survival rates for this type of cancer by 20%. Its purpose is to shrink the tumour and eradicate any microscopic metasteses that weren't detected in the PET scan, thereby greatly reducing the risk of cancer returning later.

At the time of writing this, I am about to start the third and final cycle on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to Thursday. The start of each cycle involves a long session at the Chemotherapy Day Unit at Monash, Moorrabbin where I have infusions of three chemotherapy drugs one after the other. All is well until about half an hour into the 2 hour trip home when I start to feel sick. It's only nausea, but unpleasant none the less. I feel a bit tired the next day, but fine for the rest of the time during each cycle.

Some of the side effects from the chemo that I have experienced are hair loss (still getting used to having a baldish head), dry and cracked lips and sore feet. The nurses at the Day Unit are great though and arrange for the treatments to alleviate the side effects. So far, so good. All under control - except for the hair loss.

The next step, about eight weeks after the end of the third chemotherapy cycle, is surgery to remove the tumour. This will be a six hour operation where the surgeon will remove part of my stomach and oesophogus.

Then, after another month or two, restart another three cycles of chemotherapy.

After all that, it should be over. I'll be effectively cured of cancer and can get on with the rest of my life.