I have on the whole enjoyed good health. I was thus able to undertake some pretty strenuous walks across Britain, Europe and the Middle East. Like most people, however, I didn’t entirely escape medical problems.<\/p>\n
As a child I suffered from earache, and my mother look me to see her naturopath, Dr Gordon Latto, who advised that I avoid milk, which I did for a couple of years.<\/p>\n
All my life I’ve suffered quite regularly from indigestion, and consequent bad nights. At Shrewsbury I got heart-burn as a result, no doubt, of my unsatisfactory diet there.<\/p>\n
Also at Shrewsbury I used to get a sudden tightening around my chest when I got up in the morning, as if someone had sharply tightened a string around me. Also in the mornings (as I seem to remember) my hip used to clink. Neither of these curiosities continued into adult life.<\/p>\n
In 1973 I had a wisdom tooth removed at Windsor General Hospital under a full anaesthetic. This was my first in-patient experience, which lasted four days and was quite unpleasant.<\/p>\n
I suffered quite a lot from tension symptoms in my late teens and twenties – pains in the chest and increased indigestion. From my mid-forties to early fifties I suffered from IBS for similar reasons.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1978, when Angie was in Europe and I was living alone in Cairo, I was infected with hepatitis, and was quite ill and very weak for five weeks. Foolishly I didn’t consult a doctor, though there was reason in my madness. I knew that hepatitis cannot be treated by antibiotics, but felt sure that is what I would be prescribed because in that part of the world, at that time, antibiotics were doled out like sweeties and were considered a universal panacea.<\/p>\n
When Angie returned she found me bright yellow. A couple of weeks later, on a trip to Alexandria, the symptoms lifted as quickly as they’d come. Some time later I was tested in England to check whether I’d had Australian Antigen B hepatitis, and the result was negative.<\/p>\n
All of my life I had had troubles with my waterworks, but as many male members of my family, including my father, had had similar difficulties, I suspected it was simply a weakness which might eventually need an operation, but which wasn’t too serious. However, in late 2009, only six months or so after my marriage to Christine, I had a particularly bad night after drinking a pint of Leffe beer, and decided to consult my GP.<\/p>\n
To cut a long story short, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, with a PSA of 14 and a Gleason score of 9 (out of 10), which meant there was really no room for discussion about what my treatment should be. I was put on hormone therapy, and from September to November of 2010 underwent radiotherapy.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2010 I was found to be retaining over a litre of urine, and so was given an in-dwelling catheter. This was uncomfortable, particularly in bed, and I got minor infections as as result of this foreign intrusion into my body. Then in the spring of 2011 I was taught how to self-catherise and was amazed to discover how easy this was. Such was my relief that I felt rather disinclined to go ahead with the TURP operation (transurethral resection of the prostate).<\/p>\n
But in August I did have the op, and was amazed, again, at how easy it was. Unlike in Windsor, I came round from the anaesthetic as if I’d simply been asleep. It took a couple of days to learn how to function normally again, but after that it was difficult to remember that I’d ever been on catheters.<\/p>\n
Apart from very short periods of time, my treatment for cancer and urine retention went off without me feeling ill at all. I continued with my life as normal. People did, however, tend to say, a year on from the end of the radiotherapy, how well I was looking, from which I deduced that I wasn’t looking so well in 2010.<\/p>\n
I am due to come off the hormone therapy in Novemeber this year (2012).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have on the whole enjoyed good health. I was thus able to undertake some pretty strenuous walks across Britain, Europe and the Middle East. Like most people, however, I didn’t entirely escape medical problems. As a child I suffered … Continue reading