And everybody had advice, but I thought, No, I’m just going to lead a normal life. Not pretend it hasn’t happened, because it has happened. But it’s, it’s actually a very, if you have a shot across the bows, I just decided to live, as probably all of us should lead, life as if, you know, each day might be one’s last and make the best of what one, one had, is how I saw it. And I still, and I still carry that with me now. But I don’t think it was here before this event. I thought it actually brought things much more sharply into focus about what was important and what was, some things you could do nothing about and other things were less important. But that’s just me.

And then the, oh, yes, the other thing I remember at the end of the radiotherapy, which in another sort of way helped me too, I spoke to the radiotherapist and he said, you know, Would you like to be followed up every year And I said, Well, what, what would happen if you found something And he said, Well, nothing. There would be nothing we could do. But… So, I said, Well, in that case I won’t waste your time, and I’ll forget about it Which was a good thing, because actually over the, certainly the first few years I often had a return of, I don’t know, the burping or, or something. I certainly had periods when I had floating stools. And I thought, If I’d been told to come back immediately I was worried about something, I’d have been back and forward like a, a yo-yo probably But as I’d been told there was nothing they could do, I thought, I just put it to the back of my mind, got on, and it always went away. And for, for me it’s obviously worked. I’m not advocating that for anybody else if they’re told there might be something to do. But because I was told there was nothing that could be done after the radiotherapy, and it was likely to be a, a local thing, in the pancreatic bed, I just forgot about it then and thought, Right, don’t even think about it. Just go on

That’s very interesting. it’s useful to know that.

Well, it, it was the r-, response I had to it because I think there’s nothing worse than thinking, Is it a recurrence Or if I had a pain in my back, Is it a recurrence And I thought, Well, even if it is..

I noticed something odd happening about five months before I actually went to the GP. And it happened about three times that I had, I was getting an increasing amount of sort of wind almost and burping a lot. That was the other thing that was very odd. And my husband said, That’s very odd And then I’d notice a few days later, sometimes I, each, each time I felt a little bit nauseous for a couple of days and then I’d pass a very abnormal coloured stool, as if I’d got a gallstone or something, if anybody else recognises those symptoms. I wasn’t jaundiced, but I just had this very funny stool, which was almost putty coloured. And I thought, Well, that is very odd Then months, and I hadn’t noticed at that time that actually I had been feeling a little bit nauseous before. But the next time it happened when I was a bit nauseous and I think, Well, I wonder if the same thing will happen again And it did. But that was very near Christmas and I thought, Well, in my experience I know it’s no good going to one’s GP round about Christmas. I’ll go straight after Christmas and then things will be looked into properly

I found that with me and people who knew me, it was fine. You’d just talk about it naturally and fairly matter of factly. And it wasn’t a sort of big roller coaster for me. But I think for my husband, he found it very difficult because so many people avoided talking about it at all, would even scuttle away down corridors, or cross roads. And he found that very upsetting. In fact I think the whole business really was harder for the onlookers like husbands and children, husband and children than, than for me. Because I felt I had the job to do to get better. And I have to say that at no stage actually, apart from the little bit of nausea and getting over a big operation, did I feel ill. And the other thing that people used to say to me, I’m sorry; I hear you’ve been ill And I’d sort of say rather, Yes, you know, I haven’t been ill. I’ve just had a big operation and I’m over it. And, you know, we’ll see what, see what happens But I didn’t feel ill, as I think a lot of people do. I wasn’t in pain.