After closing things up in Ireland presenting at events pretending to many people that work was normal (I was losing my job) and pretending to almost everyone that I wasn’t going through a cancer diagnosis I picked up my treatment in the UK.

its worth adding here that since initial symptoms in Sept to now life carried on as normal I was in no pain could eat and drink as normal and as I was carrying a few extra pounds most people probably didn’t notice the lump.

Anyway to the UK where in Mid Dec I met Mr Walker at the Guildford Nuffield. He repeated the camera down the throat that I had in Dublin and came to the same conclusion cancer.

Mr Walker had new information though. He expected that most likely this was as a result of HPV a virus that can cause cancer. This is important and more on this later.

The next steps in the UK were the same as the Irish consulted suggested.

The PET CT scan

I was a bit naive here and hadn’t Google much for fear of the truth so expected a simple scan. It is simple but more convoluted than I expected.

I was taken to a room prepped and injected with a radio active substance. This is the contrast that shows what is active. You then have to wait for this substance to get into your body then you have to work out of the medical gown goes on front or back (they always go on the front!)

it was important this was done before the biopsy which cold change the result.

The scan itself is painless you lie on a bench that drives you into a metal tube and it makes a little but of noise you move through the scanner so my whole body was checked door to door was about 2 hours. In the scanner was about 45 mins.