So on Tuesday (8th November 2011) I have the call with Prof. Joseph who tells me the diagnosis. This is after a few missed calls and the slip by his receptionist that he wants me to see Prof. Donde at the oncology clinic! That gets your mind running at supersonic levels I can tell you!!
I don't think you can ever prepare yourself for what they say, but I had made up in my own mind that if he was going to tell me the worst case scenario, anything better than that was a bonus..unfortunately he didn't, he told me that it was a malignant tumour on my right tonsil, this is known as a Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. But, the good news was:
1. how positive he was around getting this sorted out,
2. that we had caught it early and it was very localised, with what seemed like no spread into the lymph system
3. that we would get the treatment underway very quickly
4. They have a very high success rate with radiation therapy on this type of cancer
I was planning to fly back to the UK for my daughters graduation the following day for the weekend so we planned the treatment for this week, we organised the visit to Prof. Bernard Donde at the Sandton Oncology Clinic for the 16th November and off I went to London for a wonderful weekend watching my daughter graduate from Bournemouth University.
Obviously, by this time I had told the people at work, who have been absolutley amasing, very supportive without really knowing the full context of what I was about to go through, you will in future posts start to see names come up of people who I am truly blessed to work with.
I also told my wife, which I can tell you now is very emotional, but it is vitally important to be clear and honest with your partner, they will become your rock! I am very fortunate to have a beautiful, strong woman by my side, although she did give me loads of grief about being ill and that it wasn't acceptable, she was going to write me a strongly worded letter!! LOL!
What makes this more difficult for me is that I work in South Africa and my family all still live in the UK - skype is amasing btw!! She then told my children, I am blessed to have 4 wondeful kids, Lauren, Orlanda, Kendal and Bradley. It is really important that you get a good support system around you, because as you will see in the next few blogs as information unfolds there are some dark times ahead
Welcome to my blog, my name is Stephen Sharp and this is the start of my journey to fight cancer. I will try and walk through the stages of my treatment and hopefully give anyone out there suffering with the same problem an insight into what I have been through or am going through.
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