I was on FEC. Have you heard of FEC? I was given FEC andthe first lot I found quite easy, but by the time I got to the third or fourth one, my veins were like plastic straws, you know? The feel, I could feel them underneath and they weren’t sort of giving.

So yes, the third or fourth, and I was telling my wife that the pains in the armsbut as I sat there for each visit, because it’s sort of monthly, to let the body recuperate, I was sitting with people that were six stone and grey and I looked around and I thought my God, I haven’t reached that stage ye and of course I’m a very positive person, so I try to keep positive all the time and I thought well, at least I’m progressing alright and if I can get through this, then I’m fin and eventually I did get through it but as I say, the most disconcerting thing for me was the arms, the pains in the arms.

Just in the veins?

In the veins, yeah.

All our family know, and her family, the brothers ring me occasionally to say, How are you doing, Ben because after the chemo, of course, I lost all my hair, and that’s one of the points of interest. I was offered the cap, the cold cap, and I said, Yeah, alright, if it saves my hair falling ou, so I went along to the chemo nurses and they said, No, you haven’t got enough hair, it’s gonna freeze your head. it’s gonna fall out anywa so I looked at my wife so we said, Yeah, alright, we just have to put up with i and so, yeah, itit duly fell out. I combed it and it started to come out so I went to the barber’s and had it all taken off, and then within a few months, it’s grown back.

Mhm. And was that hair loss everywhere, on your arms and your eyebrows and your eyelashes?

Yes.

Did it all go?

Yes.

One of the things I’ve found recently is I’vebecause when I go to the clinic, the [cancer unit] is that they, there’s about 200 women there in the clinic and there’s me, and I get called and sort of, the first time we went, they thought it was my wife that was getting called in, and now of course they know me, thatthat it’s me, so
Do you feel you were offered the same service as what a woman gets?

I would have thought it was just a bit better, in as much as I was a man and all of them were keen to help this lone soldier, type of thing, you know? And still today, and because I take interest in them, I go and visit them in the chemo room and say hello and they say hello, how are you getting on and they’ve seen me bald and they’ve seen my hair come back and, you know, Oh, you’re looking good, you’re lookingrdquo;, you know? And ehSo they all know me by first name and so on.

Does it mention men at all in this?

No. I was only talking to the breast nurse a couple of days ago and I said in the information pack that they sent, they said that for the operation I should bring a soft bra with me and, you know, I realised then that it was geared to women and they hadn’t really got round toso I had to sort of temper the information but now I think they are getting there with all the information that’s available.

So at the time you weren’t given anything specific for men with breast cancer?

No.

It was just general leaflets that anyone would get?

Yeah, you had to read in, this is also men, but as I say, once it said soft br I thought well, I’ve got to be careful, justI can read it but, you know,..

Now, I see at the back here there’s a breast cancer support group?

Yes.

Did you ever go?

I haven’t been, no, no.

Why not?

Not having the time really, because of hospital appointments. They are in the evening on a Wednesday, I think, but generally we’re doing things.

Would you have liked to have gone?

Yes, and in factI got the impression, though, that it was all ladies there. So…

Did that put you off at all or

It didn’t put me off, but I wanted to relate to men. My idea was for me to go along and try and encourage men to getand I’ve always been looking for a way of getting to get men to examine themselves.

Quite a lot of the literature, when we’ve been looking at this, talks about male breast cancer, and we’ve come across thissome people we’ve been speaking to really don’t like that term. Do you have any opinions on that?

What else are you gonna call it, then?

I think the inference is that we don’t talk about female breast cancer

We just say breast cancer

We say breast cancer

But at the moment, if we say breast cance we think of women, so I suppose you’ve got to say something that brings out the male side of itotherwise it’s still going all to females, and as you say, it’s very pink, but it doesn’t annoy me. All I’m looking at the television and saying OK, you’re covering it and that’s good for the majority of women, but there are two or three hundred blokes out there every year, how can we get across tolike, my son’s forty, when should he start examining himself

I was admitted into hospital and had the operation and from there I remember going down and them putting a needle in me and I thought I was going to, the usual thing, I was gonna becount to three and you’ll be gone, and I said, Have I got and I was gone. So I didn’t get to one, two or three, and so I went down and I remember waking up on the ward because I was first in, I had been told I was first in, I woke up and raised my head and had a look and I couldn’t see anybody else awake and there was a whole ward full of people that had been operated on that morning and eventually they came round and sort of dealt with me and helped me, and from there I was then taken back to this little small unit where there was I think four people in this little unit, and stayed in there and wasI’d been given two bags, bags for blood and residue, to be taken, and then my wife came in and sort of greeted my son and my wife andI was able, even then I’d been told that the first thing ladies, or you should try and do is raise your arms and I was able to do that and there was ladies that couldn’t do it and I was able to raise my arms straight up straight away, so I kept doing that and then trying to do all the exercises that I’d been told to do at that particular time.