12. Another Pause in the Proceedings

When I came home from seeing Mr Amen for the first time, I sat in the kitchen and told Paul how things had gone, cried, explained that before meeting him, I just felt alone, and like I was fighting the world and no one was listening or helping, but after just that one meeting I didn't feel like that anymore. And the relief was indescribable. I have often mocked my Grandma, who treated anyone in the medical profession (or solicitors) like they were God's. I used to think it was how her generation had been brought up to be in total awe of some sort of superior intelligence and ability. I envied her in a way, that she could put her trust in people so easily, maybe because no one had ever really let her down, no one had f**ked up her life with a string of bad calls and misdiagnosis's like they had mine. But as I explained to Paul about meeting this man, how within the space of 30 odd minutes, in my eyes he had become my shining light, my would be hero, I sort of finally got her.

I don't really know if it was clinging to my last desperate chance made me see Mr Amen through rose tinted glasses, or he was really the exception to the rule in the way of Dr's I'd had the misfortune to meet through my many years of bad health.

But whatever the reason, for now I was running with it.

The feeling of finally having someone on my side made everything less frightening, not final, more temporary, more doable. I quietly and calmly waited for the next phone call which would take me to Cambridge Nuffield Hospital for more biopsies. Starting again just felt the right thing to do. Even if it meant another delay, a clean slate. So 2 weeks later I was nursing a sore neck once again and waiting on pathology and a return trip to see Mr Amen. This time Paul was coming, and we'd hopefully start looking for where the cancer started.

Mr Amen Take Two

I received an email from Mr Amen's secretary asking me to go for an appointment on the 2nd Oct, and I quickly arranged the necessary paperwork from the insurance company and confirmed the date. My biopsy results were obviously back and it was time to get things moving. We arrived early and sat in the 'best coffee machine area' and waited for the now familiar figure, like the shop keeper in Mr Benn to just suddenly appear in the doorway. Once in his room, he asked how I'd been and quickly started to explain the biopsies had come back and they were the same as were the first taken in Kings Lynn and squamous cell carcinoma metastasised from an unknown primary, and driven by the HVP virus as they were p16+. My diagnosis therefore had not changed.

Mr Amen asked about if I had managed to sort anything out about the side order of sigmoid colon light up on my Pet scan, and I confirmed I had made an appointment to hopefully find out if that was anything. He again informed my that it was very normal and I shouldn't be over concerned as it looked and sounded like a normal polyp from the Pet scan and offered to e mail me a copy of the Pet scan report to give to the proctologist in case she didn't have access to it. I thanked him and said I would print it off when I got home to take the following week when I saw her. He quickly then went on to say 'so lets sort out the tonsillectomy and see what we can find' It was a bit of a mad tizz then as he explained he only performed surgery 1 Thursday a month at the hospital where I was seeing him, and that Thursday was next Thursday, in a weeks time the 9th Oct, and if he couldn't process the paperwork and get me added to his list for next week I would be waiting a full 5 more weeks for surgery, which he didnt want to happen. Blood tests were taken, paperwork filled in, pre op assessments were arranged and all of a sudden it was finally happening. On the 9th Oct me and my tonsils, and hopefully my main cause of cancer would be parting company. Thanks to my new best friend.

We left the hospital, and I asked Paul 'Do you understand why I like him now?'

Paul agreed he was a very nice man and had a certain way about him, not cocky, humble, but just the fact he was in the room you felt his presence, and it screamed competence, empathy, understanding and most of all care. As we drove home, I watched the fields and houses in the darkness slip past and although scared about having to have surgery for the first time in over 25 years, relieved the person who would be in charge was someone both not only I, but Paul could sense was one of the best Dr's I'd probably ever met.