I went down to my doctors, he examined me and he said, “How long have you had the lump?” And I said “Well six or seven months now.” He went into one [disapproval] because I’d left it so long, and he said, “I’ll get you examined at the hospital.” He sent off for an appointment for me to be examined at the hospital which took rather a long time actually, that was in the October and by the November I still hadn’t heard anything. And I went back to my doctor and he said, “Well I sent it [request for an appointment] off,” and he showed me the Internet, the thing on the screen, on his computer, saying that hed sent it off. And he said, “I’ll chase the hospital up for your appointment.” And I still hadn’t heard in December. By this time my firm was getting increasingly worried about it because I’d obviously mentioned to the firm and that it was causing me grief at work because I was worried about it. So they sent me to their own private doctor, the firm’s private doctor, paid for it. He examined me and he said I’d be unlucky if it was cancer, that he seemed to think that it was some sort of swelling to do with the water ducts.

Well, the side-effects took a couple of times to work. I started off feeling a little bit sick and tired which progressively got worse. The sickness, they gave me, some tablets that they gave me I couldn’t accept because I was, I was feeling ill with them. And they took me off those and gave me some others, which worked, which worked better. And I was starting to feel very tired and irritable, I was very short tempered, mainly with the children and that. Towards the end of the treatment I was really bad tempered, I was very, very tired. In fact one day I drove to the hospital, my appointment was at 10 o clock, I got there at 20 past 9 because of the parking problems, and I fell asleep in the car park. And it was only somebody slamming a car door that woke up me, I was that tired. Really I should not have driven but I was rather stupid to do that.

Were you working still at that stage?

No I wasn’t working, I’d had six weeks off work.