And they confirmed that yes the bile duct was blocked and it was explained that the, the usual treatment for this is something called a stent. And a stent is in my layman’s language is a an expanding tube which can be fed into the bile duct and when it’s in the right place it pops open, and it immediately forces the bile duct back open and allows all that nasty stuff which is supposed to be digesting your food, out of your pancreas, out of your bile duct and back where it’s supposed to be inside your body.

This is done by inserting a tube down your throat. The, the procedure is called an ERCP, I can never remember what that stands for. it’s a very long complicated name but it’s a tube that they feed down your throat, and they can actually steer it all the way into the bile duct, and a surgeon does this for you. it’s not a comfortable procedure, you lie on your side, and she sprays something on the back of your throat to numb the back of your throat to stop you gagging and trying, trying to resist this tube. And you have a general anaesthetic so you drift off to sleep. When you come round you, your throat feels quite sore because it’s had this tube down it and you feel groggy from the effects of the anaesthesia.

So you had an anaesthetic, rather than a sedative?

It was a sedative, but in effect I fell asleep and I was out for, for a good while, yes, heavily sedated I suppose you would call it. When I woke up I didn’t feel very well, I was in considerable pain from I had a bad back, or what felt like a bad back. And this is because the pancreas is inflamed and other organs around that area are quite sore, and there’s some discomfort from a sore throat as well. So I was actually given a painkiller to deal with that. That took a while to arrive which was unfortunate. They have to get permission to give you the painkiller. It was actually given to me intravenously which I didn’t react well to, and it made me feel immediately nauseous, which was a very uncomfortable feeling, but that, that did pass quite quickly.

Did they do a biopsy at the same time?

Yes they did, they take, a biopsy is a little scraping, they take a little bit of the tumour, remember it’s just a, they call it a tumour at this stage, and that goes off for testing. So at this stage I’m still not, I haven’t had a confirmed diagnosis of cancer as such, they are still dealing with a tumour.

So within a very short time this stent, it’s marvellous because the jaundice starts to disappear and your yellowness starts to fade, your eyes become white instead of yellow, the rash stops forming and you no longer feel very itchy. So great relief after probably, yes, over a week of being very uncomfortable with the jaundice, it starts to fade over the course of maybe 48 hours. And rather than being quite unwell within probably 48 hours, I was able to be up and about and doing, and I actually was able to leave the hospital for a couple of hours, go out and have a meal out and get a break from the hospital and feeling unwell, and hospitalised in a hospital is not a very nice place to be at the best of times. So yes I would say a stent, a stent is a, is a marvellous thing.

Because of, I had a blockage, apparently, in my bile duct and they couldn’t see, it was all very clouded, so they couldn’t tell me for certain whether something was there. They did a test, not a test, a procedure called ERCP, where they put a tube down, and they can see everything, they can explore it to see what’s there. Because of the blockage they couldn’t get all the way. But they did put a little stent in to help clear the [bile duct], so that there was a clear path for the bile to go through, which cleared my jaundice then, which was a difficult, I found it a difficult procedure, because you, although they sedate you while you’re, while you’re having it done, you are aware of it, especially towards the end of what they’re doing. And it was quite painful afterwards. So I was in pain for quite a while after the procedure. But the jaundice did clear thankfully, because they’d got the stent in place.

So you had this procedure. You were still in hospital.

I had that procedure. And unfortunately after the procedure I got pancreatitis, which was very bad, and I was very, very poorly. They were giving me antibiotics intravenously. I think they stopped me, I couldn’t, I wasn’t allowed to drink or eat, and they also catheterised me at one point, because they needed to monitor my input and output, which was very important. They were constantly doing observations, temperature, pulse, blood pressure etc. Things were quite tricky. And it wasn’t till I was really on the mend that the surgeon actually said to me, came to see me, my consultant, and he said, We were very, very worried about you And he said, Do you know what I mean

Did you get an infection in the pancreas as a result of the procedure?

I did. Yes, it was, it was very nasty. It took quite a while to get rid of it. But once that was on the mend, I was fine and I was back up on my feet and, and I could go home then. But it was a case of waiting then to see a specialist in the field of pancreatic cancer.

Did they do a biopsy at the same time they put the stent in?

They did, yes. But it was inconclusive again. They couldn’t really get to it properly to, to get a good biopsy. So that was, it was all very, although I was told, on more than one occasion in hospital, that they suspected it was going to be a tumour, they couldn’t, they couldn’t say, Yes, it was definitely They could only say, it’s more than likely going to be

So how long were you in hospital to have this stent?

Oh, well, in the end a long time, for something like, something over a week I suppose. I missed the whole of Easter 2007 I remember. Because I had this problem over the INR [a blood clotting test] and the jaundice and we had to wait for that to clear up. Then, the idea was to put the stent in, down through, down through my mouth, and there was a valve in the end of the pancreatic duct, as I understand it, and they were going to force the stent in against the valve, the opposite way to the, to which the valve is meant to operate. And the valve was too strong. They couldn’t do it. So, so that operation had to be aborted. And then, so they then tried again by coming into my abdomen through the side here and putting the stent in. And that was successful. So it took and, and then I had to wait then for the liver function to, to regain its normal state.

Can you say a little bit more about the procedure they had to do to put the stent in, in the end through your stomach?

Yes.

Was that under anaesthetic for example?

That was again under local anaesthetic. It was, what happened was I was kept in over night, in the hospital after my failed endoscopy. And they said, We, we are going to try and get someone to do it tomorrow morning And sure enough I went down and I was given a similar form of sedation, where I, it wasn’t a general anaesthetic, but it was somehow a little bit more powerful than a local anaesthetic. I lay on my side, there was an insertion made in my side, guided in by an ultrasound camera, and the whole process took about ten minutes.

And again was painless. And I was then taken back to the ward. I slept for an hour or so, and two hours later I was right as rain, and very, very hungry.

So that’s good to know. So not a painful procedure?

No. And then a couple of weeks later I had a similar procedure done to take a biopsy which was again an insertion in my side, guided by ultrasound, and a sample was taken which enabled them to finally confirm the diagnosis that it was cancer.