Cancer side-effect left me looking like a freak – now there’s a glimmer of hope | UK | News
Robert Fisk says he was given a glimmer of hope (Image: Daily Express)
As I lie in my hospital bed, trying to sleep because no more morphine is allowed, this year I can feel like a piece of road that has been dug, filled in, and dug up a few months later. But unlike a driver waiting at temporary three-way traffic lights for the fourth time in seven months, this is my dream scenario. And after a surprising trip to Essex, there is a glimmer of hope that it could happen.
In scenes you won’t see in the latest series of The Only Way Is Essex, I traveled to the county to see a surgeon for a third opinion on my hernia. In summary for anyone just learning my stories about my “cancer journey”: One of the many side effects of my incurable bowel cancer is a large hernia. I’d say it’s about as big as a baby’s head, and scans show most of my intestines are inside.
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I was devastated in November 2024 when a surgeon told me it was too dangerous to fix a hernia, which meant all my plans for a life where I didn’t look like a freak were shattered.
And after discussing the matter with another surgeon last Easter, he confirmed they would definitely not be doing the surgery.
Fast forward to the present day, and I was prepared for the consultant to share the same idea with the other surgeons.
I was thinking that, at best, he would say he would discuss the issue with his colleagues, but after a few months he would tell me no.
But instead he said something I hadn’t heard during my search for yes in South London.
He said my hernia was not as bad as he feared, and that I looked very good for someone who had been on palliative chemotherapy for two and a half years.
Instead of finding the negatives of my condition, he said he thought a surgery to repair my hernia might be possible and he would be happy to do it.
But recognizing that this will be a much more challenging surgery than a regular hernia repair, solutions to make it simpler will require many surgeons to say yes (and then many hospitals to agree to spend money on the procedures).
When my hernia first appeared, doctors were reluctant to even discuss surgery for fear that any surgery would spread cancer cells. And I now have far fewer cancer cells than surgeons tend to say are too large to operate.
But the surgeon at Essex wondered why a cancer surgeon wouldn’t remove the primary tumor if I had been on palliative chemotherapy for two and a half years and was doing well.
He also recommended another surgery to fix another problem that might prevent the hernia repair from being as successful as he thought.
I have a meeting with a different surgeon in central London in March and will get his thoughts on the chances of doing the first two surgeries.
I’m not very optimistic that everyone will agree that three operations would be the best course of action.
But at least until I get a no in March, there is a glimmer of hope that I can look and live like a normal person—even if that means lots of scars from where I was cut, like a road repaired by a cable company and dug up by a water company a few months later.
