I think from a male point of view it almost makes you a better person because I think men in many respects don’t tend to talk to other people openly, other men, other whoever, and discussion can be a little bit sort of, I don’t know, just talk about the weather or the sport or whatever, and not really talk to people, whereas after an illness that sort of thing becomes less important and proper friendships and relationships with your close family and friends become more important in your life. You’re less afraid to open up and talk about things.

From looking again on the internet, what some internet sites are suggesting is that the food chain nowadays and the processed food, there are so many female hormones in the food chain that they think that this is having an effect on the increased rise of testicular cancer among men. Again those are from mostly American websites who tend to be a little bit more diverse in their thinking.

Now from that, and from generally trying to keep as fit as possible since I was ill, I don’t drink milk, I try and avoid cheeses and stuff like that which, because that sort of produce is more farmed with those sort of drugs. In other words they’re feeding the cattle lots of female hormones to beef them up to increase the milk supply and stuff like that, which is why I try and avoid milk and cheeses and stuff like that. But again that’s only a bit of information that I’ve got from the website and it’s not proven at all. But again if by doing that I might be protecting myself then I think it’s very worthwhile doing. Again it’s certainly, it makes you look at life very closely after having cancer. I try to weigh up everything you’re eating, I try and take as many vitamins and stuff like that. And initially, definitely after the chemotherapy finished and I was starting to feel well again for the first time, I went over the top, I was taking so many vitamins I must’ve been almost rattling at times, and definitely in recent years I’ve calmed down a lot now. But again it’s because, it’s not really worry, to say that I was worrying it sounds terrible, you know, it’s hypochondriac almost, but no, it just opens your eyes to the possibility that you might have an illness that you’re not going to recover from, and it concentrates you on doing everything you can to make sure that you’re going to conquer that illness. So I looked into all sorts of vitamin and mineral supplements and things that were supposed to help and, you know, if you’re not in you can’t win as it were, you know, if you’re not sort of on this regime then it’s definitely not going to help you. So I mean I’ve tried most things. Whether it has helped me in being four years down the line and still clear of cancer or not I suppose I’ll never know but
Have you tried any other sort of complementary therapies? I mean you’ve changed your diet a little bit

Yeah.

And you’re taking extra vitamin supplements, have you ever tried anything else in the line of complementary therapies?

I went to a, he wasn’t a Chinese medical practitioner but he specialised in nutritional supplements, much along the same lines as a Chinese medical practitioner would do in terms of herbs and things like that. And he recommended lots of different things to me that, you know, can be helpful, and I did follow that for I would say about a year and a half. I didn’t take any milk whatsoever and stuff, soya milk for everything. The different mineral supplements that he recommended I stayed on for about a year and a half or so, and again I don’t, I’ll never know whether that’s why I’m clear of cancer now but certainly it did no harm. It was basically a very, very strong detox diet almost, followed up by heavy vitamin and mineral supplements.

But even four years down the line, almost four years since I finished chemotherapy, you still worry. I’m having annual blood tests now, and from about a week before you have your blood test I find myself having difficulty sleeping and feeling quite anxious and uptight, and that doesn’t go away until maybe a couple of weeks afterwards. But it’s just basically because your subconscious, no matter how intelligent a person you are, you can’t switch off your subconscious from worrying about something. It’s a very, very difficult aspect to deal with. And I think in a certain way doctors and nurses could improve on that in terms of caring for cancer patients, it is the worry side of things. I think in the NHS our doctors and nurses are second to none in terms of the training that they’ve been given in treating people, but the psychological aspect of the illness I think could be dealt with a little bit better.

Especially under, in a system that’s under such a great amount of pressure, you know, you’re going into the cancer ward and you’re, there’s a, on the days that you’re going in for, like, just a check-up even, there are 15-20 other people all sitting there in chairs giving blood for their marker levels to be tested, and you’re waiting for an hour, you’re going in and giving blood and you’re way home again and you’re worrying about what the blood tests are going to show. There’s nobody actually to sit down and speak to and ask you, well how are things, and that would really help, but that is almost an impossibility with the constraints that are on the NHS at the minute, you know, to have that facility.

Yeah you get, I was offered psychological counselling for, not necessarily the worry of it all, because I had two surgeries on the same area it has left me with an aggravation of that area which is caused by the nerves that they cut in that area, have not died off. It’s very similar to somebody maybe who has, like, a limb removed, it’s like a phantom limb syndrome, that the nerves that were going to that limb have stayed active, where for me it’s the nerves that were cut during the surgery have not died off and have actually stayed active, and I do get a lot of aggravation that I feel all of the time basically, which is called a neuroma. Now I was referred to a psychologist to help me deal with that, it’s basically pain management. Now what that psychologist helps you do is to help you understand the thought processes involved in how your body experiences pain. Because if you’re feeling like I am all the time in minor aggravation in an area, your subconscious is always focussed on that aggravation that you’re feeling, and it’s like somebody saying to you, "I’m about to give you an injection, you’ll feel some, a small amount of discomfort." Instantly you will feel that discomfort 20 times more severely than if they’d just given you the injection and not told you. It’s very, very similar, and the psychologist I spoke to basically she helped me understand and re-learn almost how to experience pain and to be able to try and shut pain out in many ways.

So that was helpful?

I found it quite helpful yeah.

But I do have a numbness in my fingers, which I’m going to be left with possibly for forever. Again, it’s not subsided to a great, I mean it has subsided slightly but in, particularly in the winter, in the cold weather the ends of my fingers will almost go blue, it’s just damage caused by a drug called cisplatin, which is part of the chemotherapy regimen that is given to you, which damages the nerves in your body. Now it was just, it’s one of the side effects that you have but it’s just basically pins and needles in your fingers during cold weather, which is manageable.

Before I had the chemotherapy I had the surgery, well I had two lots of surgery, and then after I had to have the second surgery they said I’m going to have to have chemotherapy, which meant sperm banking because there’s a high percentage of men that don’t get a high sperm count back after having chemotherapy. Again, because we were interested at having a family at some point in the near future, my wife and I agreed that sperm banking was the way forward. So the local specialist clinic that is involved in that is about a 25 minute drive from my home. Now the very limit to what they will let you produce the specimen, without going into too much detail, produce the specimen and bring it into them, is 20 minutes.

Right.

Now I didn’t really want to be sitting down in a dingy dark room in this clinic and try and produce specimens there because it just, the thought of that didn’t really appeal to me too much. So we went for, I persuaded them to accept sort of the home option. But I can remember jumping into the car with, now, my wife and flying down the motorway and I almost thought to myself well, what would happen if the police stopped me? And I would turn, he turns round, "What’s this sir, are you having a baby?" And a possible answer would be, "Well possibly, you know, maybe at some point in the future," and trying to go into explanations would’ve been quite humorous.