News I didn't want to hear

Hello, folks

My larynx was taken out on Friday. There was no real alternative if I was to have any quality of life for the time I've got left. I wouldn't have been able to eat, drink or speak for the rest of my life.

It was a four-hour operation and I was still living on another planet on Saturday. The surgeon apparently did his rounds, but I didn't register his presence. He had a day off on Sunday and his deputy merely told me that the operation had gone well.

This morning (Monday), the surgeon paid me a visit and gave me the news I didn't want to hear. The operation had gone as planned and everything in that respect was fine. But when they removed the larynx, they found a whole nest of cancer cells behind it, where the oesophagus had previously been. They have already spread and can't be removed surgically.

The facts can't be changed, so now what do they mean and what is to be done?

More than ever, it is crucial that I get some quality of life now. The priority is to enable me to swallow. That should be possible once the operation wounds have healed, which is likely to take about another 10 days to 2 weeks. I will be given a gadget that will enable me to speak, although with a dreadful voice like a robot. Better than nothing. Being trained to use it properly will be on an out-patient's basis.

The plan then is that I will be back home (at long last – after almost 5 months!) and will be taken over by the oncologists for chemotherapy, again on an out-patient's basis. They will go for a type of chemical that doesn't have any significant side effects. Its job won't be to cure the cancer (that isn't possible) but to try to keep it stable for as long as possible. They don't offer forecasts these days. My life expectancy could be anything from a couple of months to a couple of years. There is no way of knowing.

It's ironic that after years of searching for happiness and finally finding it with Linda, I'm to be denied a long and happy retirement with her. We'll just have to make as much as we can of the time that's left.

That's the situation, folks. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but that's my destiny and I have no choice but to accept it.