It takes ten to fourteen days for your results to come through, while waiting you have to keep yourself occupied finding yourself things to do. The operation doesn’t hold you back as such (Well what isn’t there won‘t hurt I suppose). I would get up and have a shower, put some tunes on, have a play with Charley, for some reason I did not want to spend much time with him, I did not want to get to close in case I was going to die. I kept pushing him away for a week and would cry alone upstairs because he wanted to play but I was to scared to, that’s the worst thing about my time with cancer.

I would go and visit my uncle Steve’s car show room, have a chat with him and my cousin, ring my Dad visit Richie, I would have a pint with Phil Hawkes and Shakey on a Monday night with the Johnny Pie Pub darts team in Heswall. Anything to keep my mind off it. As soon as I was alone it was back to the fear, worry and the panic, it was the longest two weeks in history. After a few days a note from the hospital came through, I had to have a C.T. Scan, basically one of those big scanners that look like a giant polo that you lie in and move in and out of. They used to look like massive bog rolls but I guess technology has made them smaller. I sat there drinking a litre of what can only be described as "Devil's Piss" for an hour before the scan; it’s to show up all your internal bits on the scan to see if the cancer has spread. I lay in the scanner as it whizzed and moved up and around taking pictures like a drum role. If I was a Star Trek fan I would have had an erection it was so science fiction. A voice like "Pigs in space" came over from the ceiling saying " Hold your breath" twenty seconds later "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND breathe normally" She might have well said "AAAAAAAAAAND pass out" after smoking for ten years. After twenty minutes it was done.

I asked if I could have the results and she said she wasn’t allowed, so I made my way home. After about a week I started to have fear attacks when I was alone at night. Kelly would go to bed early because she had to be up with Charley early in the morning. I would sit there and try to think positive "It’s a high cure rate even if it has spread" I would think "It’s 90% survival" but "am I one of the 10%". The worry didn’t go away. It takes so long for results because they have to see what type of testicular cancer it is, what treatment works against it and to see how it reacts to different tests. I got a letter after eleven days asking me to report to Dr Clarke at Clatterbridge Cancer Hospital in six days time. I was happy to get a date but pissed off that it was longer than I had been told. I had my heart and mind set on fourteen days, not three weeks, so I had to adjust my mind to it and quickly.

I still wasn’t sleeping well, but was feeling better. The day came to go and see the Oncologist Dr Clarke. Kelly made me some toast and a cup of tea while I had a shower. I put some songs on as I stood in the shower, The Who, I think was playing; I found an old tape under my bed the day before. Music is really the only thing that helped me forget what illness I had. Four minutes of daydreaming while Pete Townsend screams "It’s only teenage wasteland". If any song can make you smile it’s "Baba O’Riley". I lay on the bed and watched an old John Lennon video. I remember seeing a John Lennon fan outside his door who had been sleeping in his garden asking Lennon to explain some of his songs to him. It flashed through my mind If I’m gonna die I will never know what "Dust and Rocks" by Weller is about or who is "Don’t go away" about by Oasis, and "Who is the seeker looking for" by The Who. I thought, " I need to know". I checked my emails; I had sent an email to Steve White at his web site to ask when he would be back in Liverpool. I'd missed his last drum clinic because I had just been told I had cancer. To my amazement I got a reply saying "Phil sorry to hear you are ill, we are up in Liverpool with Paul Weller in July, I will send you some free tickets and might even get you a drink before it starts, if that’s OK with you". At first I thought it was a wind up, after reading it over a few times I showed it to Kelly. 

She had heard me talking about Steve White for years (usually when I was drunk in a restaurant with chop sticks doing a drum roll on a bowl of prawn crackers shouting "I am Whitey"). I sat there thinking I am going to meet Whitey, maybe even Weller. (Come on lads lets all admit it Weller is God). I knew Whitey always played with Weller’s band and also most of the time Steve and Damon from Ocean Colour Scene, but as I was sitting there I got the fear, no matter what you think the fear is always there to spoil it. I thought will I still be alive in July (it was only May). I started to feel the panic again. I said to myself "Shut the fuck up man" and the fear went away like I had offended it. It was amazing; I held that moment and said "that worked" I had a way of getting the fear away. I wanted it to come back so I could try it again. Kelly said come on time to go, I jumped up and said, "OK lets go babe". The fifteen minutes drive to the hospital was in slow motion I had been up that motorway a million times too work but today it seemed new to me. I looked at the trucks, read every word on the advertising boards, looked at every car. I saw a little sporty Peugeot 206 and said to Kelly" there cool aren’t they". I looked at birds flying overhead and tapped my foot to a David Gray song on the radio I think it was "Be mine". We got to the hospital on time found a space and headed off to the entrance. The building outside looked more like a school then a Cancer hospital. As we walked closer I saw benches full of old men and ill looking skinny women with drips, sitting quietly wearing dressing gowns and smoking like there was no tomorrow. Some had hair some didn’t, I wondered what the drip was for then it hit me that must be how they administer Chemotherapy. For someone who near enough new he was gonna have Chemotherapy I didn’t look at how it was done.

My sister’s friend had given me a book written by Lance Armstrong; The Tour De France winner, who had survived horrific testicular cancer. I hadn’t got to the Chemotherapy part yet. I was using the book he wrote, "It’s not about the bike" as a guide to treatment and feelings, but I would only read the bits as I was at that stage. Cancer hospitals are nice and clean and quite relaxed compared to normal hospitals, although they are horrific places to go if you are trying to stay positive. Within minutes I saw a lad about the same age as me on a stretcher looking very ill, skinny and not having any hair. He looked so ill and weak I had to close my eyes for a few seconds, why? I don’t know but I feel guilty still to this day. We walked through the hospital to the outpatients department there where drips everywhere, different rooms, scanners, x-ray machines, people walking round with x-rays, nurses helping people out of wheelchairs. I did notice one thing, you could spot someone with cancer even without a chemo drip, even if they had their hair, you could tell because they all had the same look on their faces, all had the same eyes and all had slight smiles and a look of hope mixed with fear. I for a moment forgot I was one of them. I was full of energy. I didn’t have a drip and was smiling away (to hide the fear). I had forgot that I too would have a drip soon and be ill and pale. 

We arrived at Dr Clarke’s office, the receptionist asked us to take a seat. I sat quiet while Kelly flicked through a magazine. I noticed an old Battle Star Galactica book on the pile, it was the same one that I had had as a kid, I picked it up, every single word and picture I recognised, I must of read it a thousand times as a kid, it took me back years. I don’t know what the other people in the room thought of me, a grown man reading Battle Star Galactica Annual 1982. A voice disrupted my reading and I was called into Dr Clarke’s room, we sat down two nurses and a man with a file where in there. "Hello" he said "I am Dr Butt, Dr Clarke's registrar, now how are you". I said "scared and frightened but otherwise OK", he said "well lets look at your results, firstly it is cancer, it is malignant, BUT we have caught it reasonably early, you had a mixed Seminona and Teratoma tumour which can be treated with chemotherapy. There is one worry, the cancer had invaded a blood vessel and you are at high risk, we don’t think it has spread but we can’t take a chance". I said, "OK what are my chances of survival?" He said "good" then Dr Clarke came in. He is a tall slim man; he had the look of a well-educated man, who looked quite approachable and positive. He had a cool manner, but I noticed that he never looked me in the eye while I was there. Maybe it’s the job I don’t know. Basically he said the same as Dr Butt, but with a few alterations, Dr Clarke said it had gone into a lymph mode, but Dr Butt said it hadn’t, but who cared I had just been told I should be OK. I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders but it was replaced by a confused feeling. I was confused because one doctor was saying one thing and one was saying another. It wasn’t their fault I should have asked there and then but I left it and never asked again. Both doctors said I should be OK that’s all I needed to know. 

Dr Clarke said I would be having two maybe three courses of BEP chemotherapy. He said it was a strong combination and that I would loose my hair feel very sick, very tired, loose weight and may also get ringing in my ears and my hearing may be affected, I would get a funny taste in my mouth and get a very sore mouth and gums. The nurse also said that different people get different side effects, there are no rules to how you might feel. Twenty years ago testicular cancer would kill 80% of it’s victims. Dr Einhorn a Doctor from Indiana University had decided to combine three different drugs called Bleomycin, Etoposide and Cisplatin together called BEP. It started to have great results and men where surviving cancer. Twenty years later the survival rate was up to 90% if found early.
It still has great results for people with quite advanced cancer. Dr Clarke asked the nurse to book me into Liverpool Women's Hospital to have my sperm stored, because having lost one testical and having chemotherapy the chances of myself becoming infertile where high. I would have to store three tiny jars worth over five days. The hospital gave me three jars, each jar had to be back at the hospital within forty minutes. My first one was the next day. I took the jar into the bathroom and did the business, I then had thirty minutes to get to Liverpool, find a parking space and get to the freezer in the hospital. I went through the Mersey tunnel at sixty miles per hour (the limit is forty miles per hour) I was dying for a policeman to stop me, imagine that in court "Yes your honour, he was speeding because he had to get a jar of sperm into the freezer". That would be all over the papers, but no one stopped me. 

I only managed to do the business twice because I was too sore after my operation. I was quite cheerful, back to cracking jokes; I would go to the pub for a Guinness with Richie Philips and Phil Hawkes. I had a visit from two old friends Carl Hawksworth and Paul Hamilton (Hammo). I hadn’t seen them in a while it really cheered me up seeing them, talking about when we where fifteen and into girls, The Jam and The Who. Carl had a 1960’s parker and knew Quadrophina word for word, so he was top mod in Pensby. We would get drunk and jump around to "My Generation" in his bedroom. 
I had four days to ponder before I started the Chemotherapy. The days went quick and I was more relaxed, for once I was sleeping more than four hours a night, was eating a bit more and wasn’t as scared.

Lance Armstrong said, "Which will kill me first, chemotherapy or cancer". Not that he meant it, but went through a stage of chemo illness, which felt like death was a better option. I would lie in bed and wished I was as strong as him and more positive, or maybe people where saying that about me. Did people think "He’s brave I wouldn’t be so cool if it was me". Was Lance Armstrong as scared as me when no one was around? Where we both putting on an act? Lance had a lot more to deal with than me, I wondered if I could handle the amount of cancer he had had to fight. I would lie in bed for hours reading his book; it started to become my companion around the house. If I felt pain anywhere I would read more to see if he had had that pain, if I couldn’t sleep I would look to see how well he slept. Lance was an expert on cancer, days after he found out he went and bought books about cancer and studied twenty four hours a day so he knew the in’s and out’s of it all. I couldn’t do that I didn’t want to know, the less I knew about it the better, apart from that I had always been a poor reader. Lance’s book had just enough information for me to take in, not too little and not too advanced to scare me off. LANCE IF YOU EVER READ THIS I DON’T THINK I COULD HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU. THANK YOU.

Here comes the next step. BEP CHEMOTHERAPY

Phil Morris