Penile Cancer

What struck me and I hadn’t been prepared for was just how much energy it drained from me. That it took me, you know the nurses and the consultant, or the doctors had been saying, and always looking on the bright side I think, think ‘oh you’ll be out, you’ll be painting the house in two weeks’ time. Well it was, it was three months before I was, felt able to get back to work. So, and there were a couple of family events in between that I needed quite a lot of help to get to' my daughter had a graduation ceremony at the end of January, and I was able to get to it, but I needed my brother to come – I needed someone else to drive us down there and I needed to rest before and immediately afterwards, and go through it at half pace, so... And then, let us see, I was back to work after about three months, and I’ve probably – I was going back part-time to start with. I went back in March and probably only now, about a year later, am I feeling that I’ve got back to my pre-work level of energy at work – pre-operational level of energy there, so… It’s been about, yeh - so it’s been a long go. It’s been quite an interesting time [chuckles], but learnt a lot about –learnt a lot about people on the way.

I’ve been very active. Work’s been very difficult over the last few years anyway with the recession so, we have struggled. We’ve just bought an internet business which we’re trying to develop so I can work from home because I, I don’t have the physical strength I had anyway. So we’re sort of heading in that direction and seeing how that goes. But I think I’ve got more energy than I had 6 months ago which can only be good.

Did the process cause any problems with your finances?

Not the process but just the, my general state of health, that I’ve not been able to work physically so, or... yeah I... To be fair I was running out of energy part way through the day. I couldn’t decide whether that was just my age or, or whatever but I’ve always been very physical, done lots of building work and you know, work around the farm except for the last couple of years.
 

I told yeh work, every, work had to know about it because of these treatments. I was going to be sort of going away from work every day for these treatments. And they were really good because they’d just say well, just ‘don’t bother coming in. Just you go and get your treatments done and.’ So they were quite understanding about it. The said don’t start, because it was only like going for, you know there for sort of twenty minutes while you get the shot done. But they said basically ‘don’t bother coming in, you’ve got enough on your plate.’ So they were quite understanding work, friends, family. So, sort of everybody knew about it, I thought well there’s no use hiding it, it’s out there, and I was quite surprised that, that there was this thing called penile cancer and, at the time I think I just wanted to jump on this crusade of en..., you know, enlightening people that, you know this thing exists, watch it! [laughs] yeh.

Well I’m quite fortunate that you know I got paid on the sick and stuff like that so from that side of it I was ok. But it was a matter of how long I was going to be off, they’d pay me full pay for so long, but as I say fortunately I was ok. And also with a diagnosis like cancers and like heart attacks, major stuff, things like that I’ve seen at work, where they pay them indefinitely, they’re pretty good.
 

I was lucky because I’ve got a, there’s a sick scheme at work, so I was off on, I was off on full pay for those three months. And I’ve since discovered that I was only actually entitled to two months pre-pay and the next month was optional, but I think because I’d been open with them and they knew how serious the operation was, they were quite happy to carry on paying me. There was, so I mean that I normally do overtime and get another sort of 15 or 20% of my pay in overtime, which I wasn’t able to do, so, I did lose that. But it we’re – but of course the upside was I wasn’t able to go out and spend money in that time so I think it probably balanced out.

Well work had been very good. I’d spoken to my area manager and didn’t tell him the full details but said that I’m going to need a succession of operation, I’m going to be off work a long time. And he’d given me the green light to go ahead and get that done. So that wasn’t a concern. But even if he hadn’t have done then I would have still gone ahead- it would have had to be done. But it was just nice to have somebody on your side and helping you. So work was... work was dealt with. The company that I worked for when I went into hospital was different to the company that I worked for when I came out, because the company was bought out. Which was a bit of a concern because I didn’t know any of the new people in high places at the new company and this and that. But that all sorted itself out.

Money-wise was a huge problem. The company I work for I don’t get any sick pay. So I was on SSP [Statutory Sick Pay], which is £60 a week I think, which doesn’t pay for anything. It doesn’t pay my outgoings. It doesn’t do… So I was in a bit of a, I was in a bit of a mess financially but I made one or two phone calls and I think if you’re straight with people. And they… you know there are some people that are understanding to your problems. I borrowed a bit, borrowed some off my family. And but again that was, it was always, it was stressed to me… at nearly every point that I needed to be free of worry. Don’t have any worry, don’t have any anxiety.
 

You know when I first started I was self employed, I had a garage of my own, a business, which I had to let go because you can’t be self employed and be ill, so I had to pack that in, which, which I loved, and get a job. You know, which is, I still don’t get sick pay where I work now but at least, you know you see when I had all these operations I, I used my holidays because, because I didn’t get sick pay, I mean you’ve still to live haven’t you know even if you’re ill. You know that’s a problem for anybody I think that’s ill... managing off what money you can get. And like I’d, I think both them operations I had I had to use my holidays, cancel my holidays and use my holiday entitlement so that I could get the operation. Because there were no healthcare, no health insurance where I worked you know, even though it’s a massive power station there’s no health care or owt like that.

So the financial side….?

Oh, there’s a big financial side to it, yeh, yeh. You know you’ve, you like just stop straight away, you’ve still VAT to pay and I had to wind my business up and accountants and this and that off money what I’d managed to save which I haven’t got now, like. We had to get a smaller, we had to get a smaller house and, we had quite a big house before and we had to get a smaller house and manage, you know.
 

I would say that my concentration with work has been a little bit sort of clouded with the fact that my son had passed away the previous year and it’s difficult to be able to say whe... you know whether…. it’s a mixture of the two things or the one thing. Certainly with my son passing that’s affected my workload my work ability. And this operation I think has probably not affected my working ability that much. So financially I would say that…. probably not much.

Yes, it’d, any, anything impacts on it but it’s not a singular business that I’m involved in it’s a limited company run by the family – my wife is effectively the head of it anyway, and therefore me being absent takes a pair of hands out of it but since I’m pretending to be partly retired anyway, very unsuccessfully, but partly, it did force me to have a little bit of time off and give me if anything a bit more time for showing my flowers than I would have had under normal circumstances. So yes it did have, it did impact itself on work but in my personal point of view perhaps a good way.

The only thing that it does effect is… you probably wouldn’t know this but if you were going on holiday and you need insurance as soon as you mention ‘cancer’ the premiums go up, whether it’s terminal or not, as soon as the word’s mentioned they ask you all the questions – ‘when did you last go to the doctor’s?’ and the premiums go up and that’s the only effect it has on your life [hesitation] from the point of view of carrying on. It has a cost implication that you would never really think about at the time. Everybody thinks about ‘I want to live’ but then they say ‘oh I’ll go on holiday’ and then you think ‘oh that’s cost me, the insurance has cost me nearly as much as the holiday’ and at the end it’s a big thing. I suppose a lot of cancer patients – especially with conditions worse than mine will find it very difficult to actually get an holiday because they’re probably not working, probably not retired there’s several other things that you’ve got to look at from their point of view as well as my point of view but the point of insurance on your life is an important factor when it comes to continuing your lifestyle as it originally was. I mean if you went on holiday tomorrow you’d just go down to the holiday place, book it, take out an insurance, end of conversation. I go down, I book it and then I think ‘how, how much is it going to cost me on the insurance?’ We went to Canada to see my son six months after and the price of the insurance was nearly as much as the air fare just because I’d had a problem. At the stage, at the time I was at, no problem with me, it was just that you’d been a cancer patient and as far as they’re concerned it’s an added cost to them because obviously if anything did happen while you’re away and you didn’t disclose it, it would be a problem for your family to get you back or whatever, or treatment or whatever… So that’s the only thing in life that’s sort of slowed up a bit is actually picking a holiday (laughs).