I may have mentioned it before but sometimes I can get competitive.

Not in the traditional winning things way but more like secretly racing people at traffic lights, seeing whether I can eat a whole jam doughnut in one go (it didn’t end well), or by failing to finish ultras and then going back to prove I can do it.

To continue this hot streak, I’d already farted and defecated ahead of schedule…

If you’ve come to this blog out of context that’s a weird sentence so let’s be clear – these were positive signs of recovery from surgery.

And now a day earlier than planned I was being sent home which was another cheeky W in the Sam column.

Annnnnnd relax

Surgery on the 11^th September, discharged on the 16^th, recover at home until going back to work. Easy.

For fans of these cancer blogs, don’t worry. There’s a twist.

When they removed a chunk of my large intestine, they take out some bits and piece around it to see whether the cancer has spread at all.

I was fortunate that the CT scan beforehand showed it hadn’t infected any of the big stuff – think liver, pancreas and stomach – but there was possibly a chance it had still crept out and so they took out some attached lymph nodes.

Two weeks after surgery, I got the call. 4 out of 21 showed cancer.

Now as a professional marketer, my mind raced through whether this was good or not.

4 out of 21 sounds low. If a striker has scored 4 goals in 21 then they’re underperforming. A 20% chance seems low if you’re placing a bet but one in five doesn’t sound too bad. Except if you’re betting on it being a spreading cancer tumour in which you really want to get as close to being odds on as possible. You’ll take every bet boost or morally dubious gambling promotion to make it as certain as possible that you don’t have to go through this all over again.

It’s been pretty annoying all in all.

Cancer meet Chemo

I felt a little bit like I’d passed an exam with an A* only to be told that wasn’t the real test. Alex Horne was smiling quietly as he handed me the secret second task.

My surgeon was replaced by an oncologist. Colorectal (needs a rebrand) appointments at Newgate St turned into trips to Oncology which derives from the Greek for tumour or mass.

I also found out that a couple of mutated genes, a family history of bowel cancers, along with my “brain” tumour meant it was likely I had something called Lynch Syndrome which means a) it’s not my fault and b) hopefully I can warn others who might be susceptible.

Not saying it’s good news (which I think I’m probably due at this stage) but if it can prevent the same happening to those I love then totes worth it.

Tomorrow, I will start four cycles of chemotherapy (from chemical healing in Greek) designed to blast any remaining cancer cells and tell them never to come back. Problem is, you can’t really target them specifically so I’ll be getting rid of everything – baby with the bathwater style. That’s quite a weird phrase when you think about it.

Each cycle is three weeks long and consists of two drugs called XELOX or CAPOX – XEL or CAP for capecitabine (Xeloda®) and OX for oxaliplatin:

Day 1 – Intravenous OX delivered over two or three hours in hospital.

Days 1 to 14 – Take CAP tablets at home

Days 14 to 21 – Recover

To make it easier to deliver the OX (which also sounds weird), a temporary valve needs to be put in which minimises the chances of infection and side effects.

Each type has pros and cons. As an example, one of the cons of the portacath is that is currently not available in Jersey for some unknown reason that probably falls under the term “Island Life” and probably wasn’t helped by the removal of the mail plane – hint hint to any government officials reading this.

Not a lot I can do about it except hope that Hermes turn up with a package and put it in the right place so I can switch for future cycles.

Instead, I now have a PICC line poking out from my right bicep and extending inside me through my veins towards my heart.

Basically this means I am in plug and play mode for blood tests and drug infusions when we get started on Thursday.

Apart from that, everything is an unknown. Three months of wait and see as to how I will react and recover.

You can follow it all right here. I accept payment in the form of cheques, postal orders and alcohol from January.