The year began with me being pretty motivated, I wanted to get back to training judo and bjj, the two sports I’d done most in recent years. I gave one session a try and had absolutely no cardio, just completely ran out of gas mid roll, I’ve always been able to pace myself so this never happened. I put it down to a lack of training, getting old and being a lot more unfit than normal and resolved to get in the gym for swimming, weights and the cross trainer. I did this for a while but even by my standards just didn’t seem to be getting results. Without really thinking about it I guess the lack of improvement became de-motivationg, other things like work began to get in the way and things gradually slipped back. I’d probably resigned myself that heading through middle age I just couldn’t do things that I used to.
The year was quickly passing and going into the summer I got a couple of colds, annoying because I’d usually only get about one a year. At the end of August start of September I felt really ill, there was one day I could hardly get out of bed and I put this down to a chest infection. When I couldn’t shake it and after a couple of days off work I phoned my GP. I didn’t have to go in, I described how I was feeling over the phone and they prescribed a course of antibiotics. September continued and I couldn’t get rid of the cough, so towards the end of the month phoned the GP again. This time they sent me for a chest x-ray and told me to come in a couple of days later to look at the results.
The x-ray was at the local drop in centre and was really quick and efficient, the radiologist straight away told me to phone the GP surgery, I’m not sure he was supposed to say but he said it looks like an infection. Before I could even phone I received a call from the GP office telling me they’d sent a prescription of antibiotics to my local pharmacy and that they’d see me in a few days. So far I was pretty impressed with this quality of service.
When I saw the GP he said it looked like an infection, he wanted me to go for another x-ray for comparison at the end of the month when he would expect to see an improvement, it could also be that there would be scarring on the lung. He did mention cancer in passing, but said that was unlikely and there was no point worrying about it anyway – so cheers for that. I went back to the GP A few weeks later, after getting the second x-ray, it was at this point they said they were referring me for a CT scan for further checking.
We need to talk about cancer 