Thomas - Interview 20

Age at interview: 79

Age at diagnosis: 69

Brief Outline: Thomas was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 1999. He feels that he is more appreciative of life following his cancer diagnosis. He still has to be careful with what he eats, but doesn't worry about cancer on a day to day basis.

Background: Thomas is a retired police officer. He is divorced, with two daughters. Ethnic Background: White British.

More about me...

Thomas was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 1999. Initially, he thought he was experiencing piles or bleeding and didn’t go see his doctor when he developed symptoms. He feels that people should go see their doctor when they have bowel symptoms and wishes there was more information in the general public regarding bleeding bowel symptoms as an early sign of cancer. 

 

With regards to treatment, Thomas had radiotherapy prior to the surgery to shrink the tumour before his bowel surgery. He was offered chemotherapy after his surgery but decided not to take it. He also had a stoma pouch for about six months after his surgery, and got lots of support from a nurse who came around regularly to help him with it.

 

Having had cancer made him see the world differently and he realised how beautiful life is. He was relieved to be discharged from hospital follow up and felt he realised what life has in it. 

 

He has to be very careful of what he eats even now. He has kept a diet of foods to avoid as some foods, like tomatoes or onions, make his stomach react very badly. He has come to terms with these issues around certain foods and knows how to manage it now. Thomas sometimes finds it difficult to eat ready meals when they change the content slightly and it has an effect on his stomach. He still has some slight incontinence. 

 

He felt lucky to be retired with a good pension as other people in his ward had cancer and needed to figure out how to support their families. He doesn’t usually worry about cancer, or lose any sleep over it. It is something in the past that he has moved on from. 

 

Thomas, who is living beyond colorectal cancer, keeps a diary of foods that cause him bowel...

The only hitch, actually, was caused by bowel cancer, and unfortunately by the nature of its, and the totally, not incontinence, but I’m not, I have to be very careful of my diet. I effectively kept a diary of food to avoid because that, that’s not so much incontinent but it’s more of a leakage weeping, which is embarrassing if you’re out with a friend or something like that.

 

Coming out I found of all things, onions for one thing of course. They can have a drastic effect on me, tomatoes, oddly enough, equally... can have a, make me very loose. It’s not painful. It’s embarrassing more than anything. The unfortunate thing is to a certain extent is that sometimes with the ready meals you can buy, the microwave meals, they may change the contents very slightly, not noticeably, but that then can have quite an unpleasant effect on me. So that’s life. You get on with it.

 

As I say, I’ve never been an epicure. To me food is just a means of getting from one meal to the next. And I’m just as happy with a cheese sandwich as I am with a a a eight ounce steak, although I’d happily eat an eight ounce steak [laughs]. But that’s life and you accept it. It’s got to go on.

 

So was it your idea to use a diary or was that something that somebody suggested?

 

One of my daughters suggested it, that I use a diary and keep it going so, and for the first year or more. There’s still one or two I can safely eat and what I do avoid. But, generally speaking, you come to terms with it. As I say, it really is a matter really of embarrassment rather than, particularly if you go to someone’s house for a meal and they’re serving up something which you think, “Oh, no.” But then again, you can generally get around food with it. My family of course know what I can eat and what I can’t eat and most of my friends and, of course, when I go out with my sister for a meal, but then again I still have to select something suitable for myself when I go out with friends for a meal. 

When leaving hospital after colorectal cancer treatment Thomas was reawakened to the beauty of...

From what you were saying before it sounded like when you came out of hospital you almost saw things differently.

 

In many ways, it’s hard to say whether rebirth would be a bit extreme, but it wasn’t, the light didn’t suddenly shine upon me or anything like that, but just, oddly enough, I was standing in that, waiting at the door while they bring the car to pick me up, I thought, I was just realising, you know, you miss a lot of things in life. We miss a lot of the, well, beauty, for want of the extreme things in life. You go to a park, you walk through the park, get a breath of fresh air but you don’t, sometimes you might not admire the flower beds or something else like that, but you don’t, you look at it but you don’t really see it, and you’re not going to say, oh, you know, God did quite a good job here. It’s, as I say, a rebirth, possibly a realisation of what life has in it.

 

Do you think that you would have felt that way if you hadn’t had cancer?

 

I don’t think so really. Fortunately, apart from the odd broken bone, I’ve gone through life without any hospital work and that was the first serious illness I’ve ever had, and I saw, maybe I just sort of breezed through. I breezed through life and got on with it. In many ways, possibly I’ve looked too, too inward looking at a very small area, but when you see what you’ve missed, and it’s, that is nothing in itself, a green lawn, tulips, a lily pond, daffodils, crocus and blue skies, it’s nothing splendid. There are thousands of them but really it’s you see it with different eyes. You see what really you’ve been missing.

 

You walk through a park, sort of thing, and you’re worried about whether you’re going to get home on time to watch a programme on the television, and there’s a far better vista around you and you want to see what’s on television. But it’s, as I say, it’s an awakening but possibly a kick up the backside, it’s might be better described.

Thomas doesn’t worry about his colorectal cancer coming back but he has an irregular heart beat...

Do you ever worry about cancer coming back?

 

No, no, no I don’t sort of lose any sleep over it, or if it comes back it comes back, end of story. One of my worries, as I said, at the moment I have an irregular heartbeat, which is causing no problem, touch wood, but I’d rather I didn’t have it. I think the only thing that really worries me is the possibility of a stroke, that’s the one thing, so I have, I wouldn’t like to because it would mean I would lose my independence to a certain extent, which I wouldn’t want. I’m a, maybe I suppose I’m a loner. I like being by myself and so this way I don’t bother anybody but myself.

 

But no, cancer doesn’t worry me now.