My Cancer Journey

MY BLOG……..

Coffee and Chemo

In The Beginning – June to August 2023

By Mike Bostock, coffee lover and lead singer of Dream Sellers

‘And then the chair shot me’

In the beginning, when there was only coffee, there was peace, until I bent over the arm of a chair and it shot me. Although suspicious that something was wrong, ok, I had sat on the chair, and although it was armed, there was no need for that.

I am a 75 year-old active male with no previous major ill-health problems and non that ever required a hospital visit. I walk every day an average 10,000 steps (still find my way home), meet friends in a Reading coffee shop most days and sing regularly with a lovely folk rock band, Dream Sellers, plus keeping a 35 year old classic car on the road.

All, labours of love apart from the coffee which is pure love.

After prodding the pain area in the right-hand side of my abdomen, several times, I realised that either the chair’s arm had done some serious damage or more likely, identified an existing health problem and done me a big favour.

A few weeks of prodding and increased pain resulted in a visit to my NHS GP. No problems in getting, firstly a telephone appointment (the trick is to phone the surgery exactly at 8 when the lines open, and not a second before or after) and within hours, I had a face to face appointment at my NHS surgery. I had probably left it too long (never do that!) but once in the NHS system things happened at speed.

Introducing the two week clinic…..

After palpating me, my GP said ‘right we’d better check you out for cancer’. First gulp! She explained that as I was 75, had a pain in my side, that was enough to press the red button and get it checked out pronto (not by the Lone Ranger’s side-kick who was Tonto, anyway) within the ‘two week clinic’ (that’s ‘two weeks’ of time, not ‘too week’ to survive) in which I would be screened several times and an accurate diagnosis made possible.

A flurry of hospital visits to the various locations in the Reading health hub (Reading RBH, Bracknell, Thatcham) then took place. Within eight days I had experienced finger prodding (now someone else’s), two CT scans and an ultra sound scan. Within twenty-four hours of the first scan, the specialist nurse called to say, we’ve found a mass (but I’m not a catholic) in your colon, probably cancer. They used the term ‘mass’ for a while but quietly switched to referring to it as cancer as we both got more comfortable with the idea.

My dad passed away from cancer over sixty years ago and I had been waiting for my moment ever since; not from fear, it did not intrude in my life in any major way, but from a sort of resigned expectation but helped by the knowledge that medical treatment of cancer had massively improved since my dad’s day. Maybe not as much as we all would like.

I lived a fairly responsible life based on most things in moderation; is that an extreme in itself? My diet was well balanced but did contain some processed, fast food, just a little of the tasty stuff, some alcohol but no more than at the top end of the Government advisory limit, increasingly replaced by coffee and finally, a lot of curry. From the age of fifty I exercised way way above the Governments paltry advisory level of two and a half hours a week, more like fifteen. Takes longer than the Gov. recommended level to get my walking shoes on and off!

I was relaxed about the potential impact of my lifestyle on the propensity to grow a cancer. And so the longer I was cancer free the better my chances of avoiding it altogether or at least becoming a cancer survivor; or so I thought.

When my son was diagnosed with cancer almost thirty years ago (he is now a very fit fifty year old) I was devastated to the extent that I had two unexplained malfunctions of my brain. A subsequent perfect brain scan showed no problems and my experiences were put down to the shock of my son’s diagnosis. It was an example of ‘try switching it off, then switching it on again’ but with a human brain, not a computer.  And it worked!

Every parent knows the fear of a threat to your child’s well-being.

How to enjoy your time in an MRI scanner but colonoscopy is a challenge……

I have a touch of claustrophobia so CT and MRI scans are no fun for me. I dealt with it by singing songs in my head and keeping my eyes shut. The trick is to use the clicks made by the machine as your tempo and imagine you are in a karaoke club. Can I stay in here please until I’ve finished my song? I have been told that some hospitals can actually pipe recorded music into the MRI machine to jolly the experience along.

The virtual colonoscopy scan process involves pumping something very different into you. Second gulp!  Firstly, you take a very strong, fast acting laxative to clear the bowels the night before; it works sooner than you think, do not go out…. Then, when on the table in the hospital clinic, the following day, suitably undressed and lying on your side, hospital gown open in the rear, a pipe is inserted by the nurse into your rectum (third gulp) and carbon dioxide gas is pumped in to inflate the bladder, colon, stomach etc. for precise camera imagery.  Smile please but which end or both if you can manage it? It does make your eyes water at its peak and you are advised not to take the bus home, the gas has to go somewhere.

After several more RBH hospital face to face and telephone meetings with the surgical team I had all the information necessary to understand what was going to happen to me, methods to be used, surgery objectives and risks attached. The cancer was clearly defined in my colon and would be removed with one or two other items cluttering up my abdomen. The risk of declining the operation was always way higher than having it. However signing disclaimers on each form promising not to hold the team responsible, should I not survive, was a sobering thought.

Time to meet my maker?……..

I am an avowed atheist so meeting my maker and being confronted with my worldly sins was not an issue to me. In fact for me, the meeting with my consultant surgeon, Simon Middleton, was key to my panic-free approach to the operation, Simon was my God. He exuded confidence, always a useful thing in someone you are trusting your life to and my internet Google research revealed him as a top guy.

A few days later my operation appointment letter arrived, gulp 4. The operation to remove my little cancer chum, hiding until now, was to be just three weeks away. I was to report to the hospital at 7.30 on the morning of 16^th. August.

As I pondered the future, two morbid thoughts crossed my mind.

Could I squeeze in one final gig in case the curtain finally comes down?

I live just a 15 minute walk from RBH; was this to be my last walk?

Find out in my next blog or maybe not……..

Coffee and Chemo – The Operation

August 16^th.

Mike Bostock, cancer sufferer, coffee lover and lead singer Dream Sellers

It was a fine, late summer’s morning in August, the sun was peeping through, the birds were chirruping, the squirrels were squirreling and I was on my morning walk as usual but this time heading for the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, just ten minutes away.

Today was the day of my operation, the removal of my cancer riddled ascending colon!!!

Looking back on that walk, I remember being strangely calm; if this was my last walk it was pleasant enough. Clearly, I possessed a large ration of naivety, I had never been through this process before and anyway, at the last moment, I could simply pass by the hospital entrance and walk on into town for a coffee as usual and enjoy a chat with my ‘last of the summer wine’ or in my case ‘last of the summer coffee’ chums.

Why should I worry, I had read the list of risks that my operation would pose, about the same as driving on the M4 or walking on pavements amongst the e-scooters and e-bikes and phone zombies walking toward me, all risks I took  on a daily basis.

My operation risks were only…….

• Postoperative incisional and shoulder-tip pain
• Haemorrhage and/or haematoma complicating procedure
• Injury of ureter (tube connecting bladder and kidney) during surgery
• Injury of duodenum
• Paralytic ileus (temporary failure of small bowel to function)
• Infection of puncture wound(s)
• Postoperative wound infection
• Post-procedural intra-abdominal sepsis
• Postoperative intra-abdominal abscess
• Postoperative urinary tract infection
• Failure of bowel to heal after reconnection
• Dehiscence of surgical wound
• Postoperative incisional hernia (which may require additional surgery)
• Conversion to open procedure
• Gas embolus
• Cardiac arrhythmia
• Postoperative pneumonia
• Deep venous thrombosis of lower limb
• Postoperative pulmonary embolus
• Postoperative heart attack (myocardial infarction)
• Requirement for further surgery
• Healthcare associated infection including COVID-19 (Coronavirus)
• Death due to complications of treatment

Love the last one – if the others don’t get you, this one will!

I was assured that it was unlikely that I would get all of them, so that’s OK then.

I report for duty…..

I didn’t, of course, walk past and presented myself as requested at the cancer surgery reception, on time at 7.30. All was calm and everything seemed under control.

They were expecting me, a good sign, I was checked in and immediately shown into a cubicle where I could undress and change into the classic hospital gown. By now, after my scans, I knew which way round the gown was worn, with the gap/overlap at the back. In these minutes before something as major as an operation, I imagined something like yoga or any form of mind control would be extremely useful. ‘Don’t panic’ was upper most in my mind, followed by ‘they don’t like it up them……or in them’ in this case.

I get to sing in a theatre……

I had no idea how I would really react. However, I already had a cunning plan. I planned to resort to music, my prop in any situation like this. I had selected lines from one of my favourite songs that I perform in the band, the ‘Lakes of Pontchartrain’, (my preferred version is by the Coronas) I would sing, one verse line just before going under and then its following line as I regained consciousness. A good plan but one which required perfect timing and the co-operation of the surgical team. I achieved neither, as I was prepared for the operation in a room at the side of the operating theatre, I was about to sing ‘If it weren’t for all the alligators’, I’d sleep out in the woods’ when I felt my legs turn to concrete, so instead I sang ‘ooo I don’t like that’, and heard the response, ‘don’t worry, you are going under nowww………’. Note to self: Must write a song using those lyrics and the emotions therein.

It was followed by complete nothingness. No dreams, no singing, no pain, just a big nothing. Similar to my experience from Earth’s formation thirteen and a half billion years ago until my birth in June 1948.

I awoke four and a half hours later in the recovery ward and forgot completely to sing the next line of the song ‘You’re welcome here kind stranger, though our house is very plain’ Although, if I’d sung ‘ooo I do like that’ I’d have been super impressed with myself. But I didn’t.

I have struggled since to come to terms with my complete operational musical failure,

BUT still, I was alive!

I get to meet Mary Magdalen and pee myself……

The recovery ward is exactly as it sounds; it is there to aid your short-term recovery while you are still in a state of mental confusion and physical numbness. It is not to be confused with intensive care wards and by comparison, there appears very little equipment although enough beeping to shatter any peaceful slumbers.

The various anaesthetics were still doing their job and I felt absolutely pain free. The confusion was soon replaced by a sort of euphoria that I had at least survived and maybe the operation had been successful.

I was introduced to my nurse, a beautiful Nigerian lady. In the recovery ward all patients are allocated a nurse who concentrates on a patient, close to a one on one basis. I was very happy that she was my one.

I was drifting in and out of sleep into the early hours. I guess around three in the morning, I blearily awoke to realise that my ‘chap’ was moving around of its own accord, perhaps it was regaining its own consciousness. I opened my eyes to see an image of what I can only describe as Mary Magdalen and it was she who was causing the involuntary movements.

I asked politely why Mary Magdalen was engaged in this behaviour and was this part of an NHS/Private treatment package they were trialling? Mary explained that whilst I was unconscious, I had had a catheter inserted and I had now filled its bag which she was changing. Further, her MM appearance was the result of the cold cold temperature in the ward which had prompted her to wrap a white hospital bed blanket over her head and around her body.

I found the catheter to be a thrilling addition to my stay. The wild abandon of lying back and peeing without have to get out of bed, with no effective stomach muscles, was most enjoyable.

Closed for business……

This was not to last and within twenty four hours I was discharged to the general ward. Regrettably, I left both Mary Magdalen and my catheter in the recovery ward where they will both be twinned in my mind for ever.

My days in the general ward were unremarkable other than the on-going battle to open my bowels. Typical of a colon removal, the bowels don’t ‘open’ for several days and in fact mine remained firmly closed. The surgeons who had operated on me, visited now again over the first couple of days. They informed me that the operation had been completely successful. I could only report to them that my bowels remained firmly closed for business. However, on the third or fourth visit I was able to report that, while I could not claim that my bowels were now open and doing business, I was able to expel some wind. At that, the two surgeons, fine upstanding examples of men of the knife, both chorused, in perfect unison ‘ah, farts, we love farts’ I wasn’t sure that my wife would agree.

After five days, I was fit to go. I was already one of the ‘old hands’ in the ward and knew the ropes. My advice to the newcomers was two-fold. Firstly, do everything the nurses tell you to do, don’t ever offer advice and secondly take the morphine!

The ward coffee wasn’t great and I suspected not made from Columbian beans, processed through the Italian method but the coffee shops of Reading now beckoned.

I would now return to RBH on a regular basis for reviews and possibly chemo in the months to come. I would find out in six weeks’ time after the laboratory had examined the removed parts.

But I now knew where the coffee shops within RBH were!

Coffee and Chemo

– A light hearted look at my own chemo experiences

By Mike Bostock, cancer patient, coffee lover and lead singer of Dream Sellers

Chemo anti-cancer treatment may not be an enjoyable experience but it does give you something to chat about. Particularly with strangers who will immediately feel great sympathy towards you; milk it, is my advice.

Essential visits to your local hospital will get you out and about and bring you into contact with many people. The opportunities for interesting interactions with staff, patients and visitors are legion. I could even write a blog about it?

I have six months of this to look forward to. Just 1120 tablets to take. The finding of cancer cells in just one of the 17 lymph nodes taken out with my colon, caecum and appendix was enough to need eight cycles of 2 weeks on a drug called Capocetabine and one week off. The week off is used to allow the body to recover and for ‘bloods’ to be assessed for the next cycle.

As a performer, I always like good reviews…….

This week, my oncology review, my first some three months after my operation, had gone pretty well and I had been cleared for chemo cycle 2. My next two weeks of tablets, Capecitabine, a well understood drug, it’s just the people that aren’t, would be waiting at the hospital dispensary but not for half an hour.

A taste to die for……

Time to kill, not just cancer cells and so I found the nearest in-house coffee shop. You can buy pretty good coffee almost anywhere these days; I like the bitter taste of the Italian style of black coffee typified by Kingdom coffee. A large Americano please, oh and I’ll have an almond croissant. The taste of an almond croissant with bitter black coffee is to die for, well hopefully not but at least, I would be in the right place.

The hospital coffee shop was busy with few places to sit, apart from a window facing bar accompanied by a line of stools (not that kind of stool, however appropriate). Having settled down I found that the coffee was too hot to drink and so I concentrated on the croissant and thought about my situation.

I was unlucky, initially it looked like my operation was 100% successful and had removed all of the cancer from my colon and body with no need for chemo treatment. However, just one of the lymph nodes outside the colon contained cancer cells. As one of the team said, you are probably completely cancer free but the problem is the word probably. I was given a choice, chemo or no chemo. The answer was obvious and chemo it is.

Meet my little 500 mgm warriors…..

I initially viewed my taking chemo tablets as poisoning myself but I changed this to think of each tablet as a warrior going out to fight the nasty big C. Ok, there were friendly fire casualties as my guys destroy any fast multiplying cells, cancer, red, white, blood cells, they do not distinguish between them. Anyway, just like a WW1 strategy, so long as you had more troops than the enemy, in a war of attrition, you would win, eventually, and I did have more, I hoped. ‘Mopping up’, the description of this stage of my treatment used by the medics, sounds more like locating and destroying terrorists with specialist troops not an all-out war.

Should I buy a second croissant? well you only live once…….

The view from the dirty café windows was actually quite depressing with a large non-descript building to my left with no views onto anything interesting like the morgue, or an operating theatre and to my right equally dull, was the multi-story car park; no crashes nor suicides, just a steady stream of modern anonymous cars, leaving with windscreen wipers beating out an annoying rhythm in my head.  The rain was lashing down, the view was getting even worse.

I then realised that although my coffee was now cool enough to drink, I had finished my almond croissant. I had to consider buying another croissant if I was to enjoy that intermingling bitter coffee and sweet croissant taste. An important decision had to be made

I both avoid a conversation concerning the Balkan wars and the lyrics of  ‘Funk My Life Up’

At this moment a rather beautiful young lady sat down next to me with her food and drink. She immediately broke the ice or was it ‘put up her umbrella’ and simply said ‘typical English weather.’ The combination of this statement and a foreign accent were the clues that she was not English. I responded that I was English and that I had never seen anything like it and what was it. This was a rather feeble joke in the style of the English dry, possibly wet, sense of humour but I think she thought I might be on the loose from the mental health ward.

I apologised and said I was not great at accents but she was clearly American or Canadian and I hoped I did not offend her either way. She was pleased that I thought her accent could be American but she was actually from Herzegovina. Ouch, where is that, this chat could get a bit embarrassing given my minimal knowledge of the Balkan countries. Probably wise to avoid the Serbian Bosnian wars. My memory of Marshal Tito, who undoubtedly would be someone Trump would look up to if he, Tito, was still with us, was minimal. It also meant I was robbed of the bonding opportunity of letting her know that my daughter actually now lived in Austin, Texas, although she still spoke with an impeccable English accent. I was ready with the fascinating information that she lives just around the corner from Sam’s BBQ café where the great Paolo Nutini recorded live, Scream, Funk My Life Up or was it, New Shoes? If that didn’t impress her, nothing would.

So why then the American accent? The young lady whose name was possibly Maina, told me that she had an English mother and had grown up speaking with an English accent when speaking English. However, at some stage she had decided that the English accent wasn’t great and an American accent was far cooler, poor child.

We moved on to safer ground and talked about who had cancer in our families.

I described the fantastic treatment that I had received from the NHS and my determination to organise a charity music concert for the hospital. She declared that I reminded her very much of her grandfather who, like me, had a very positive attitude towards his cancer battle. He died. I smiled, approvingly.

Coffee on Campus……

Maina or was it Mina, was a Reading University undergraduate, studying law  and was in her last academic year before graduating in Spring 2024. A quick exchange of our knowledge of coffee shops on the University campus (my favourite is La Dolce Vita, conversely their library coffee is to be avoided at all costs) and she was gone, she graduated out of there……a sort of has-bean……

So thank you young lady; for a few minutes you brought a little sunshine into a dull wet English afternoon. I would never have met you if it weren’t for the chemo tablets.

Now, where was I, oh yes, should I buy another almond croissant to go with the cooled coffee, and enjoy the promised delightful taste? Ah no, I had now also drunk the coffee whilst chatting, so, if I was going to get that combo taste, I needed to buy both again.

Or should I just pick up my little warriors from the dispensary and head off into the rain.

Let battle commence.

Coffee Chemo Rock’n’Roll and a Doughnut

By Mike Bostock, coffee lover, cancer survivor and lead singer of Dream Sellers

About Us

(Progress: Cancer diagnosis July 2023, successful operation August 2023, started chemo September 2023.  Almost finished Cycle 2, 280 Capocetebine tablets consumed, 840 to go. Minimal side effects, so far. All within wonderful NHS)

An interesting week, maybe erring on the ‘doing a bit too much side?

The chemo team advice in respect of activities is ‘we don’t want you to isolate, we do want you to do the things you want to do and enjoy but do not take silly risks, like sitting next to a contagious person.’ Where would I find one of those in Reading anyway?  I am reasonably relaxed about exposure at the moment as my white cell count after the last cycle was 6.2 and haemoglobin 118, pretty close to normal. I was now on my Cycle 2 of chemo with no reduction in energy levels and minimal side effects.

I go out clubbing on Tuesday night……….

So it started out as a fairly relaxed looking week apart from playing in my first gig with Dream Sellers since my cancer diagnosis back in July at the ‘Up the Junction’ club in Reading, Tuesday night. This was a big thing for me as music is such a large part of my life and the threat to my participation was, well, a threat! So, this was a bit of a tester, was I fit enough to sing for an hour plus, did I find the exposure to possibly contagious people too worrying, would I catch anything my lowered white blood cells couldn’t deal with, would I get diarrhoea during my performance and have to apologise to our cajon player etc. etc.

The club, Up the Junction, which is really a small cozy, very friendly bar, holds no more than 50 people with a small stage at the back. Tony, the long-time owner, is building its reputation as a music venue. As a 7 piece band, we filled the stage and spilled out onto the floor making it a very intimate experience when we played from 10 to 11. At least I was the one spitting at the audience but my chemo warriors will stay in my body, no leave passes are allowed; they have plenty to deal with inside me!

Taking the chemo during a night out…….

The timing was a problem, not timing as in the songs but as in the taking of my chemo tablets, all five. I was due to take them at 9, 12 hours after the last consumption. I arrived at the club at 7 in order to help set up and conduct a sound test, a couple of songs to OK all performance things. So, I would be in the club taking my drugs in the rock’n’roll style, bit of a difference from the 60’s scene (actually, I wasn’t into drugs, then or since, starting out on Polo mints and then progressing to mint flavoured cigarettes, called, Menthol or Kent, Menthol flavoured cigarettes, I thought I looked cool and minty fresh)

I had come prepared with one sheet of my chemo drugs, a blue medical rubber glove and a couple of doughnuts, alongside my guitar. The drugs because they were the drugs, the medical gloves because these little buggers are so toxic, called cytotoxic, that I can’t touch them with bare skin and the doughnuts because I need to eat some food to aid drug absorption in my stomach and I like doughnuts anyway (why the guitar, I hear you fellow musicians say)

Chemo, a rubber glove and a doughnut……

Curiously, the club has a great back room,  much larger than the bar itself.  Now the green room, a music technical term to describe where us musicians can change, try and learn chords and lyrics at the last moment (never works) and take drugs! And so I rolled on the rubber glove, consumed chemo tablets 186 to 190 and ate one doughnut, leaving a second doughnut for later, all in time to prepare for our stage entry.  I diligently packed the remaining doughnut, plus now empty backing card which had held the drugs and the contaminated blue rubber glove in a paper bag and placed on the table for my later disposal in my guitar bag.

In the event, literally, the set went very well, I felt strong all the way through and the band were great, high fives all round, six if you have enough fingers.

The sound balance by Rich our amazing engineer was spot on from the start which always helps. Tony, who you will remember is the owner, was pleased and requested our speedy return. Chris, a cheery audience member, was super pleased with our version of ‘Sister Golden Hair’ as it reminded him of listening to ‘America’ back in the day, Westy produced his best yet dance routine to our version of Fairport’s version of Matty Groves and Max from Reading University Film faculty took several hundred stills and a few videos.

We left happy but tired to our homes. Thousands of hours of practice are made worthwhile by nights like this.

The following morning and a worrying loss……

Refreshed, I woke up with no obvious side effects from the night before and in due course started to pack away my gear where I had left it the previous night (early morning) Oops, no sign of the paper bag containing empty drug container, rubber glove and doughnut. No doubt still sitting on the table in the green room. What a combination for the cleaner to work out what had happened here.

Well its rock’n’roll, chemo and doughnuts.

On that day, I received a call from a fabulous local singer, Zoe Badman, would I like to come to Newbury on Saturday and sing with her band at the switching-on of Newbury’s Christmas lights, with rehearsal in Basingstoke on Thursday.

Let me think about it…….of course I would, my fee, a coffee and a doughnut.