In late Nov and Early December of 2024 I was dealing with 3 things.

• Being made redundant
• Working abroad and a busy work travel schedule
• Dealing with the fact that I like had cancer.

These things didn’t occur to me at the time but one in 2 people will be diagnosed with Cancer. There are lots of different Cancers lots of different cures.

I guess I come from a generation that hears cancer and thinks the worst not helped that my father died of bladder cancer in 2018.

So the next stage still in Ireland was a referral to a specialist Dr Moran. The appointment only took a couple of weeks and I met Mr Moran on 4th Dec.

He felt the lump stuck a camera up my nose and down my throat (not as painful as it sounds).

He asked if he should talk turkey and I took this to mean warts and all I prefer the direct approach so I said yes.

So i am a cancer doctor and I would say from what I am seeing and what the ultrasound said that you have a cancer of the throat and the next steps are to establish what it is where it is how far it’s progressed and get a treatment plan.

Hearing this from the consultant was the second big shock. The planned tests were a Head and Neck CT scan and a biopsy of the neck.

For those like me who are uninitiated with these terms a CT scan is a big machine you lay in after being injected with radioactive elements that shows up activity. My layman’s understanding is this will show where cancer cells are active

A biopsy is a sample of the lump sent for diagnostics.

More on these in the next post.