I think now, if they got it early enough you won’t have the problems like what I’ve had. But, to give them advice and that is don’t ever, ever get disheartened. Always look on the bright side because there’s always got to be something better just round the corner. And this disease, I mean it’s not, chose wherever it is wherever it is, it’s not a… laughing disease is it? People’s not happy because they’ve been told they’ve got cancers and that but the thing I want to say to them really is always look on the bright side, never ever get despondent and with it being where it is as a man in some senses… different people react in different waysI mean I’ve lost mine but people now seem to be, it seems to coming to light now more and more than when I first contracted it.

Of course it’s a hard, to me course it’s a hard decision but at the end of the day, if life’s life isn’t it? And you need to live your life. I haven’t got a penis but I’m 66 years old now, I haven’t got a, and I’m still enjoying myself. I’m still enjoying my life and not having a penis isn’t stopping me enjoying my life. I’m not having the fulfilment of life as a bloke but I’m alive and I’m happy and I’m talking to you. And I’m trying to give advice to other people whereas if I hadn’t had it cut off, would I still be here trying to tell people or advise people not to get despondent in any way? Look forward because there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. And thats my own personal advice to anybody.

I was readmitted on the Monday morning and by this time I had questions to ask, and eventually I got to see a bloke, [doctor] to find out what were going on and he suggested that I go on a course of chemotherapy to try and like save my penis, which I did do, and I think it was four courses I was supposed to have of this chemotherapy and I only had two. I sailed the first, I sailed through my first session and the bags that I had on lasted for a day and I had four bags on, which just like took it into the fifth day. So after I’d had, like the first session of chemotherapy and then I had three week off and then I went back in after three week, to carry on my chemotherapy. And that’s when, on [hesitation] the second course, the second session I was really, really poorly. I got ulcers in my mouth, feeling sick so I had, I went through that and I went home but I were really poorly then. I lay down on the settee and was feeling sick and everything, I can’t remember really how long it lasted for. And then, when I went back for my third course of chemotherapy my blood count were so far down that [doctor] decided that I shouldn’t have chemotherapy that he stopped that and I had to go on a course of radiotherapy which was it were like the radiotherapy was they built a device so I could put it round my penis and this machine were, it started off and it did like forty five seconds this side and then the whole machine turned over and it did 45 seconds that.

Well when he put me on the radiotherapy he told me that I’d experience the skin coming off my penis as I was going through the course but none of that transpired. I didn’t have any side effects or anything with the radiotherapy until the 20 sessions had stopped. And it wasn’t probably while about a week later, could have even been maybe two weeks later obviously I don’t know how the radiotherapy works and that but when I started going to the toilet and having a wee and then when I took my hand from my penis all the skin was coming off and it was all going red and it was all, well the skin was all peeling off and that, and it was very, very uncomfortable. And as I say like, I used to, [hesitation] to stop it I don’t know how can I put it, I had to get in the bath to ease it. It were, I wasn’t in pain or anything but it were just, you know sometimes you just want to scratch it, and so I found, I found out that just sitting in the bath with just clear lukewarm water and letting the heat get round it, that used to ease it and that. And [hesitation] I can’t really tell you how long that went on for but like eventually it all does all subside and goes down.

This radiotherapy, how it was explained to me were it like decreases the cancer, it like makes the cancer grow smaller so obviously the tube inside my penis was having, was having the radiotherapy and that must have contracted as well because I found out that when I peed it just came out so fast and with it splashing back I had to have a little bit of an operation, I was only in for a couple of hours, go down to the and I don’t know how they widened it but after the operation they gave me some (I don’t know what they call them) they were just like a little plastic tube and I used to put some gel on it and I used to stick that down my penis to keep, to keep the what do you call it, urethra or, to keep that wide so I could pee normally instead of it coming out fine and splattering about all over. So once I used to stick that down and widen it up, I could pee, you know it used to come out as normal like. But if I didn’t put this tube down it and keep it open then all it would do was just go back to like it used to be before you know, it just used to come out fast and splatter all over and that like. So as long as I kept it open it was ok.

Well… I’d have to look at my notes for you but I have had a few CT scans. I think the last one were in November, I think the last one were in November, CT scan. So like from then and I think I saw the specialist somewhere round about that time as well and so from November I don’t have to see the specialist while next month. So I’m going to see him now in err June and then well obviously I don’t know whether he’ll want to see me again or whether he’s going to be happy or. Like I don’t know how long he wants to see me down the line like. I mean he might want to see me for the rest of my life or I would imagine it’s like it was for my first one, go and see him quite regularly and then after a certain time then he’ll just say well there’s no more we can like do for you but just pop in once a year,’ I mean I just don’t know so. I can’t really tell you what’s going to go on like down the line. But they always seem genuine enough and they always seem to be concerned about you and everything, you know what I mean and he seems a nice enough person you know because like when he was going to take the gland out of my groin he came and sat on my bed and he told me what he was going to do, you know do to me, not to worry and whatever.

So I went in and obviously had the operation done and it’s, when they take this gland out it, it affects the fluid that gland, like effects the fluid in, like in your legs and what it’s done with having that lymph gland taken out is, all it’s doing is the fluid’s nowhere to go and it’s building up inside my leg like, you know what I mean. I’m not in no pain, I’ve never been in any pain but all I do is feel uncomfortable and it’s just something that, that like well obviously won’t go away it’s going to be, so. But he did tell me… that it would only go up to a certain, my leg would only bloat out to a certain degree but what he means by that is I just don’t know. But it’s thingy like, you can see there look, at the end of the night that is really indented you know what I mean and when you put that leg at the side of this one you can see how the fluid’s building up in that leg but there again it’s going round my body and it’s really and it is affecting the other leg. But I’m in no pain whatsoever. But it’s just like something else, there was a lump inside my body and it had to come out so it’s out. I am in a bit of discomfort but at the end of the day I’m still here so, talking to you so I’m happy with that.

[The specialist] came down to tell me that it was malignant, that the lump had been taken out but I had cancer on my penis and the words he used were I’m very sorry to tell you… that the biopsy has come back, it’s malignant, it’s positive and your penis has got to come off. And he just promptly got up and he walked away. So I just put my dinner to one side and started getting dressed to go home, because I just thought well, what more can they do to a bloke than like cut his penis off?

For him to come down and sit on the side of the bed and just tell me that it was malignant and your penis has got to come off and just promptly get up and walk away. That’s still, that’s ingrained in my memory and that will always stop there is, how I were first told about it and I wasn’t very, very happy. And like as I said, I told you my first reaction were throw my dinner to one side and start getting dressed and go home because to me, there isn’t much like then [hesitation] to be told that you’re going to spend the rest of my life I mean I was only like about 51 and having to spend the rest of my life without a penis, and how I was told I wasn’t very, very happy about it and all I wanted to do was just probably get out of the hospital and go and have a pint. To be quite honest with you I just didn’t want to be in the hospital. Probably if I’d have been told about it and he would have like consoled me and gone into, and told me that say like oh you’ve got cancer but we can do this, we can give you this and we can give you that or do the other. Then I probably might have thought, oh well.