NEW: It's only cancer... my personal journey

Blogs can be self-indulgent. I will make no excuses for mine; it is all about me.

But I hope to compile these accounts with some humour; hopefully also pass on a few lessons for other sufferers and their family and friends to learn from... all from a place of genuine peace and contentment.

Cancer is no fun. Especially when you are told yours is terminal and inoperable. The only option is palliative chemotherapy in order to buy more time.

But i have found you need to try to embrace hope, and the journey brings lessons you wish you had adhered to in those years when you didn't know you what you were to come up against: especially 'to live every day to the full' – and any number of those myriad slogans on plaques and fridge magnets that litter tourist shops and garden centres. Live, love, laugh and the rest. You can't do enough of any those.

I thought I would deviate from the usual with blogs like this and start with a cancer joke... no, really.

Two friends meet in the street and one says, "Hi Dave, how are you?"

Dave says: "Great, but better than Doug..."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you hear? He died the other week. It was the funeral on Tuesday."

"No, I had no idea. What did he die of?"

"The big C..."

"Oh no, what sort?"

'Ah, not cancer... he was walking past Currys and a bit of the sign fell on him."

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The scariest word the assessment ward duty doctor said to me was 'spread'.

Not 'I am afraid we have found cancer in your bowel, as we thought'. That was when I truly knew I was in big trouble.

I had long suspected I was unwell and had been getting steadily worse. I had been reporting feeling extreme fatigue to my GP for three years and the surgery never got to the bottom of it. I never felt I had been listened to properly over a number of years, principally the Covid ones.. I will write about my theories behind that at a later date.

After the CT scan results were in (it was gone 10 at night on Good Friday and the scanning staff were keen to get home to enjoy at least some of their Easter) the ward doctor told me there were definite signs of a primary bowel cancer with spread to other organs, notably the liver, spleen, backbone and possibly lower lung.

I immediately halted the conversation until my wife Pam arrived. I was shocked that the conversation had started without her there.

I had taken myself to A&E at Leicester Royal Infirmary with pain on the right side of my chest and lower abdomen as well as my abject frustration at a likely fatal delay in diagnosing what was wrong with me. The previous April I had signed off my last page at lunchtime on a Tuesday – the front of the Ashbourne News Telegraph. I never worked another day. I felt burned out; a shell. With such a small team left after round after round of redundancies at Reach newspapers (they own the Mirror and Express), I had worked on despite being ill, for fear of leaving colleagues in the lurch. Some might say I should have prioritised myself.

It was Good Friday (oh, the irony), when I arrived, having calculated that half my current home city of Leicester, would have decamped to Skegness. I was through triage before my rear end warmed the seat in reception and in front of a tall, young and welcoming A&E doctor in 45 minutes. Then things began to unfold at speed, often too quickly to be anything other than for me to feel completely overwhelmed.

The A&E doc was not happy with what I was telling him. I had the entire bingo card of bowel cancer symptoms: fatigue, extreme weight loss ( I dropped four stones in four months from 12st 6lb) and a fair bit of blood in my stools, a fairly recent addition. And then the pain. Over-the-counter tablets didn't cut it.

All the more scary that the medic had to fight his consultant to get me admitted immediately to the Royal's GP assessment unit and a CT scan. The consultant had, he said, been all for sending me home with paracetamol. Truly.

My ever-supportive wife of nine years, Pam, worked on a children's bowel ward in the Royal for 20 years so she was the perfect person to steer me through the initial shock.

In fact for me it was less a shock and more a weird relief: affirmation that I had been right, that I knew my body and I knew things were patently not right.

Later that would turn to anger that the growing menace had not been detected in time to make a difference for my prospects of survival. I am only 66. At this stage I knew no more than the basic diagnosis. No idea of the extent of the damage or that it was incurable.

Pam was in bits. So, too, later were our two girls, Michelle and Stef and their partners Tania and Sam.

After a couple of nights on the unit, where all the staff seemed to know my condition and were the epitome of kindness and compassion, I was sent home with enough medication to fill Pablo Escobar's shed. But there were also hugs and best wishes from the staff that had cared for me. I welled up, as I do at the random kindness of strangers, never quite believing I had touched their world in some way.

I know from previous family brushes with cancer what could be on the horizon, so I was keen for those closest to me to be supported and to support each other. Everyone is different and some were in denial, others shock, and some just incredulous. My golf mate Ed was in tears but I promised I'd keep up his coaching sessions... even if it was on the PlayStation he lent me!

Back home, with the promise of support on the way, I settled in but developed pain on the other side or my torso - even more intense than the side with the tumours and their hideous offshoots.

I also had non-stop hiccups. It sounds trivial but not when it lasts three nights and hiccupping replaces steady breathing. This was the point when I screamed: 'Isn't the cancer bloody enough?'

After a rare home visit from my GP's out-of-hours support, I had some med changes which sorted the problem. I almost laughed at the idea I could be so ill and yet laid lower by hiccups. It seemed absurd.

Next day I had an appointment on the fast track pathway with a consultant at another of the city's hospitals, the General - a 30-minute drive away. My brother-in-law, Dave, ferried us there. As we parked, I found I'd had a text from the hospital saying they would ring back. But in moments we were at reception.

I had mentally bunkered down over three days ahead of learning what my likely prognosis would be. Instead we were told the consultant in question didn't have a clinic that day, or had been called away urgently (pick an excuse) and the appointment was cancelled.

I went, as they say in football dressing rooms, bat-shit crazy in front of a busy clinic. The receptionist and a nurse tried to quieten us down and banish us to a private room. But even the patients were tutting as I said that today was supposed to be about finding out whether anyone need buy me a long-playing record for Christmas. Instead I faced more excruciating limbo, going over the worst case in my mind at night. It led to a rapid deterioration in my condition and almost certainly a shut-down of spirit and fight.

Eventually another consultant broke from his own clinic - clearly quite grudgingly – after we said we would not leave until I had been seen. I was raging.

I am not usually given to rage. But what a way to treat someone. There had been no compassion or forethought about me, clearly. I felt like I just didn't matter; all the time knowing that this cancer would be growing by the day. Even then, I didn't get the full picture... just an outline.

Back home, on edge and agitated, I developed more pain, this time more intense. My surgery sent a young doctor out of hours and she stood just outside my room talking on the phone to her boss at one point. I clearly heard them looking to find me a bed in a hospice as there was nothing at any hospital, and mentioned that I was on palliative care. That was news to us. Overheard in a phone call. It wasn't at anyone's paygrade at this point to tell me what they all knew, not until I was able to see an oncologist.

Thankfully I was admitted to the Glenfield Hospital, the closest of the three Leicester hospitals to home, and the best, for what would be eight nights. I had a side room because of immunity issues, but open visiting, too. They cleared up doubts over whether I might have a blood clot on the lung (I didn't) and made sure my meds were all working together.

The Ward 16 staff again were top notch. Could not do enough for me. I think they got a bit edgy when I didn't take the regular paracetamol they gave me as a pain top-up, fearing perhaps I might take them in one go. (I was on a 'watch'), I heard.

And the head nurse and a round-making doctor both told me that while I was now medically fit to go home, I should stay in my bed until a care package was in place, in writing.

It was worth the extra two nights. And a very valuable lesson that things move when they want the bed and you will be forgotten if you leave without the package in place and confirmed as such.

Next time I will look at the GP system failures that beset me and I am sure is still failing many, many others.

My experience will be different from that of many others, possibly not. I would love to hear from others who are on their own cancer journey, perhaps to share their views in a later blog.

Email me at paulmarkfry@gmail.com and let me know what you think - and if I can find out any advice that might help you or a loved one.

In the meantime, I lean on the words of the legendary Scottish warrior William Wallace: "Every man dies, but not every man really lives" is one of the most iconic and memorable lines from the 1995 film Braveheart. They should stick it on a fridge magnet in the shop at Stirling Castle. No wait...