I went to see a homeopathist actually and that’s right I did do quite a lot of treatments to help myself cope with that afterwards. She was putting me on monthly sort of homeopathic medication. I had been going to her in the past anyway but she just gave me masses of things to help my body fight the after effects of the radiotherapy. Because when I was having radiotherapy it was pointless taking anything, that was so powerful it was just going to negate anything else I was taking so it was afterwards, she just gave me loads of stuff to take and I actually sent off to different companies and you know I was drinking aloe vera juice and I was taking sort of kelp tablets and all sorts of things and marine stuff, strange things off the bottom of oceans across the world. And I tried to do it sort of fairly intelligently because it is quite expensive you know you end up sort of paying quite a bit for this sort of stuff so I was determined that I was going to give my body back what I thought it could benefit from. So yeah I had a few months of doing those sort of things.

I don’t know, when I meet people now, I mean I stopped my treatments at the end of last year and I’m back to full time work now and I think I, people that sort of see me think oh my God I can’t believe you’ve had all your treatment and things. And I have to, I do think that a large part of it is down to the fact that I’ve had acupuncture and homeopathy and watching my diet and things like that. I think it’s got to be.

It’s difficult to tell whether or not your energy levels have gone up because of the acupuncture or whether or not you generally get like that anyway. But I think that anything that makes you feel good and feel relaxed when you, you know after you’ve had it done has got to be a good thing really.

I think one thing I did while I was on sick leave the second time was I started looking at complementary therapies. The first thing I did was went to have acupuncture, specifically for the pain which I went to see somebody who was very local which was great because it’s close and hes a GP as well so I had the confidence in his judgement. I’m not implying that other acupuncturists aren’t very good and very well trained but that’s how it helped me. And it did actually seem to help the pain and it wasn’t, sometimes acupuncture can have a very good effect for back pain and things very quickly but my pain it didn’t do that it was too complicated I think. But it did help me to reduce the painkillers and I think if any sort of complementary treatment is holistic, and it’s helped me on other levels as well I think emotionally and that sort of thing and of course one of the reasons why this person doesn’t work full time as a GP is he likes to have time with his patients and you’re sort of lying there for an hour or so having your treatment and you talk to him as well about all sorts of things and that has a great benefit in itself I think. And since then I’ve looked into all sorts of other types of complementary therapy, herbal therapies and things like Bach Flower remedies and I’ve started learning Reiki myself, I went to a Reiki healer who helped a lot and I started learning that and things like meditation and relaxation and the whole sort of thing that can help people really.

So I think looking at things positively and what’s happened is so vital to fighting it. That’s what everybody seemed to say to me. I think, I can’t remember whether it was the young nurses at the cancer clinic, they’d sort of say “Well when you’re there focus on the cancer and just see it as something that’s leaving your body when you’re having the treatment.” And I did, I kind of, I did sort of visualise these sort of cancer cells which, while I was actually in the treatment and I kind of almost willed them away while I was having the treatment. And I did, I did feel that there were other things to sort of to work on rather than ‘oh I’m just lying here as you know a human body which is having some sort of treatment you know theres going to be chemical reaction’, I definitely didn’t just sort of feel that there was that sort of thing going on. I felt, well I emotionally and psychologically can contribute to this.

I then went out then and bought things like the Optimum Nutrition Bible and books likethat which actually goes through specific foods that can help certain cancers. So cervical cancer like papaya and butternut squash, anything sort of beta carotene, things like that are very good. And my homeopath actually backed that up and I’m on a special diet where I can’t eat things like tomatoes which are supposed to be fantastic if you don’t have cancer, if you’re trying to prevent it, but people that have had cancer treatment tend to have quite high acidity in their bodies. And things like mushrooms which sort of put your kidneys under a lot more stress so I can’t have mushrooms. Anything like sea food, if you’re going through chemotherapy anything that can obviously bring food poisoning on is a very dangerous things because your system is, your immune system is very low. So no sea food or things like that pork because pork tends to have more sort of bacteria in the meat and on the meat. And so it’s things like that that I’ve suddenly started looking at a lot closer than I ever did before. I mean I just, I’d just eat anything before other than offal.

So I think you do, I think you do because you want to, I think it’s a really natural response to have that when you’re diagnosing something you want to do absolutely everything you can to make sure that your recovery is as probable as it can be.