Invincible.

Tags

Aria, chemothearopy, Ducati, hope, invincible, love, motor bike, ninja

In life, only when something happens are you then able to stop and look around. As a young man I rode motorbikes everywhere. I rode bikes at the soonest possible age and even before I was legal to ride I rode on the fields on dirt bikes I bought with my paper round money. I loved two wheels, I had a racer when I was really young. It was white with drop handle bars.

  
This was the bike I had, I also had an xl100 Honda for the fields.

  
Life was very different at that young age. I progressed onto bigger bikes 

KH 250

  
Gpz 1100

  
Fzr 600

  
Then eventually my CBR 600

  
Then the latest bike I owned some 7 years ago was my ZX900R

  
I was fearless, no contemplations of ill health. That I may possibly get sick, I was invincible and never ever contemplated consequenses. I used to hear of other friends coming off their bikes, hurting the,selves badly. But it was never in my mind, I never even considered that I could make a mistake and come off. Things did happen like I bought rubbish tyres called swallows for my Honda super dream and fell off turning it around in a car park.

  
I feared nothing or no one, I actually believed I would live forever. I was Peter Pan I was someone that had not really know serious injury except a broken leg in rugby and an accident on a RD80LC. I ran into the back of a ford Capri. But it turned out that the owner of the ford was seeing someone he should not have been doing. So he put his bumper in the back of his car and left. I heard nothing more. 

RD 80 LC

This was just like mine, my brother bought it off me though.

  
I remember the day I finished riding bikes. Slowing down as I went through the gears on my Ninja, with my Andie on the back. It had new tyres sprockets, chain and brake pads and discs. Yet I was really bothered about something happening to the person I treasured on the back. My future wife. As we rode home together after another day out, I knew that it was my last ever time on a bike. My life changed knowing that I loved and cared for my love Andie greatly, it’s not something you can buy. But I realised that’s our days of exhilaration were over in that respect. 

But I still believed I was Peter Pan, I still believed I was strong and would never be affected by anything. I ate what I wanted, drank what I wanted, I went out all the time and even travelled Austrailia and newzealand one year. 

That is until 6 months after we got married and our lives were sent into disarray by cancer. I became confused that I just may be fallable. That I was indeed as normal as the next man. Although I have always lived a life without a care for my well fair, lived a full packed adventurous life. Fear of losing my life was never part of me, I had no fear of man or machinery.

What having cancer has taught me, is that life is fragile, that we did not know what will happen around the corner, what will affect us in the next hour of our lives. It’s made me value a smile given to me by a stranger, it’s made me realise that people are precious, that’s life is precious. That not even I am able to escape desease. Cancer has actually given me something very precious, it’s made me realise how important life actually is. Yes I have fought the fight of my life to sustain my life, it feels amazing to be able to receive that smile from my wife and friends. You have a life, love the life you have and those that are in it. Hug them while you still can, don’t complain about what they are not, love what they are.

Fonz

Follow me, I will follow back. 😊
http://www.fonzandcancer.com

Follow me on Twitter

@fonzmark

Email – fonzicloud@icloud.com

Our support group on our FB

Cancer stories (people helping people through experience) 

It’s a group where people’s experiences are used to encourage others. 

Everything you read are based on my own experience and my own opinions. I express them here to encourage you. Please share with others, if it meant something to you it will to someone else. All images are from a Google search. Or my own.

Copyright © 2016

What’s treatment mean.

Tags

attitude, chemothearopy, health, help, hope, love, nutrition, radiation, scans, support, treatment

How do you see treatment? After all it starts with a nice word, a word our parents said that meant something nice. A treat like a chocolate bar or an outing somewhere nice. But as an adult it means a medical way of treating something that needs medication, surgical management. When I was told you need treatment, I had no idea what that meant. I had no clue how that would occur. The word chemotheropy was such a meaningless word to me, but when you ask the question “what if I don’t have treatment” and you get the response “you will die” you kinda know you are going to need to do whats required of you. You then have to acquire the tools required to beat or under Ho your treatment. For me, what I needed most in my life was positivity. I knew that there was no room in my life for anything less than a ‘I can’ approach to the drugs I needed to have administered to me.

  
I also needed to trust that what they were doing to me was going to work, I asked questions like. “Is there another way” “could I not beat it by diet” I have since learnt that doctors have only 1 hour of nutritional training in a 7 year training period to become a GP. I have learnt that it’s our own knowledge that can help us, or maybe aswell as that the trust that what they do works. After all that was the answer I was given when I asked is there another way. “The way we know works” so why try to fight it, I needed to accept that they knew what they were doing and effectively trust them although making sure that what they gave me is what the doctor prescribed.

  
For me treatment meant, scans,  tests, and lots and lots of drugs. They named the drugs chemotheropy, and they were administered over long periods of time, they were in bags hung on a drip stand. They had words like cytotoxic written on the bags, there were more than one bag that would be dripped directly into my blood stream. My main weapon I used when having treatment was something anyone that faces illness needs. Not just cancer, it’s a weapon that can lift you out of any hole we find ourselves in.

  
Positivity, and attitude if we have both of those in our armoury, then our chances of success are massively increased. That’s because we believe we will win, our attitude is positive and our expectations are positive. My attitude to feeling down was positive because I believed if I was down the only was was for me to get up, therefore the only effect of being down was that I would get up and beat the situation I found myself in. It’s like we talked about in a recent blog about our minds. It’s only our own negativity that drags us down by the very thoughts we think in our minds. Our attitude to treatment and anything that is negative, is a massive part of getting through treatment. Well it was for me, and I know it helped me greatly in my fight.  All people have a lot of angry moments, I am not saying I did not get angry I did, lots. But the main help is to be positive, and expect an outcome that is in your favour.  My attitude to treatment is most certainly the main weapon to overcoming what I faced. 

I truly hope that my writing how it was for me, helps you in what ever you face. Remember it’s not feeling negative that’s a bad thing we all do and did. It’s how we deal with it that matters. 

Fonz

Follow me, I will follow back. 😊
http://www.fonzandcancer.com

Follow me on Twitter

@fonzmark

Email – fonzicloud@icloud.com

Our support group on our FB

Cancer stories (people helping people through experience) 

It’s a group where people’s experiences are used to encourage others. 

Everything you read are based on my own experience and my own opinions. I express them here to encourage you. Please share with others, if it meant something to you it will to someone else. All images are from a Google search. Or my own.

Copyright © 2016

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Tags

cancer, Cancer stories, chemothearopy, death, decide to live, decision, determination, honesty, hope, love, will

It’s only when we think we can’t carry on that we find the real substance of a person. We have all been there, head in your hands feeling that overwhelming feeling of uselessness. That there, is where life begins. Where the real fighters start to live a life. It’s where you find out what a person is truly made of, as I write I am reminded of a time where I decided (seemingly) that I was going to have no more chemo. It was mid way through my first treatment called ABVD. For those that don’t know, my first treatment lasted 6 months. 12 chemo son in all every 2 weeks. It’s such a shame I never documented anything, no diary no thoughts. Just my memory that fails me, that I have to work with. I remember being at the end of what I could bear. 6 was enough and I did not think I could take any more.

  
I had chemo on a Thursday back then, my decision could be a life threatening one as cancer was in my bones, allot of organs as my deceased blood poisoned my whole body. I remember being so stubborn, saying to Andie I can’t, saying I won’t. What was I doing, why did I want to self destruct by not having treatment. I did not know what I know now with regards to diet, and nutrition. It was suicide to not have the treatment I was being offered. You see I was on a trial, which meant they were learning from my treatment. So others could be treated better in the future. The chemo was also an acumalative treatment which means that chemo builds up in my body until cancer can’t live there any more.
Unbeknown to Andie I had spoken to my specialist nurse who had bought me time. The next day 4pm to decide if I would carry on. The whole of Thursday and Friday I did not speak to anyone, dismissing conversations. Feeling genuinely unhappy to be alive, unhappy I had cancer. Exstremly angry that I had even had cancer, every time a canular went in I would cry. It was a horrendous time. A time I like to forget but for a couple of people what I write may make sense so it’s for those people I write this. 

  
That dark day in September 2011 I had given up on life, given up on us. Given up on chemo, I had quite literally agreed with myself that I would die. Life ends here, I will not carry on. I know Andie pleaded with me to not give up, looking around with tears in our eyes. You want to give up on us she said, we were looking for each other all of our lives. It was a very sad dark time, one I have only just now revisited now for you. So that you understand that your not alone, that it’s normal to want to stop the pain. That chemo is most proberbly the worst thing you will ever deal with in a world where pain exsists.

  
I am still here though ain’t I, still trying to encourage people that there IS life after cancer. That it’s down to us to make the right choices. The next day was D day in our house, a day I had to dig in. I remember being knelt down with my arms aloft crying out aloud, asking the God of my understanding to touch me in some way. To help me to find the strength inside of me to carry on, that was a tough old day. A day I had to decide and I alone that I would carry on the battle.

  
That’s when I started to become strong, I started to stand and move forwards. Arranging for my next chemo to start the next week and focusing on finishing treatment for US. That us was important enough to endure this path. The purpose of this blog is to say these words to you. YOU CAN, just stand and move forwards,mbecause you feel at the end of your comfort zone, this is where you will show others what you are made of. The substance you have within, going that one more round when you don’t think you can. Well YOU CAN. TRUST ME.

Mark

http://www.fonzandcancer.com
Follow me on Twitter
@fonzmark
Everything you read are based on my own experience and my own opinions. I express them here to encourage you. Please share with others, if it meant something to you it will to someone else.