I wanted everyone to STOP.

Tags

alone, Belive, cancer, determination, faith, hope, survive

It was that day when I had to go for my results, it did not matter who was in that room. My wife was there, the consultant, student nurse. 7-9 people in the room altogether. Yet I felt so alone, so afraid and so weak. Non of it was in my plan for my life. It was not in my mind when I said I do to the person I wanted to spend my whole life with. What kind of crap is this, that I had to sit in that chair on that day and hear those words. I want to try and help you to understand what happens when you hear those words.

You see up until that day I was invincible, indistructable, a mountain of indistructable muscle. But I wasn’t was I, I like everyone else was falable. Those words pulled the rug from under me, made me lose my footing and fall to the ground in a heap in my mind. ” You have cancer ” he said. The world went blurred, black and white if you like. Life became like a vivid dream. That everyone should stop moving whilst I came to terms with those crushing words that I just heard. It was like a cloud of negativeness had just engulfed me. It did not matter how much I knew people loved me, as that tear rolled down my cheek, I just felt alone like no one knew or could actually understand what I felt. 

I believed everyone should just STOP, let me tell you how I feel. Just allow me a little time to come to terms with this horrific day, to do that you have to all STOP though. But no one stopped, no one allowed me time to understand what Chemo was. Nothing stopped only my world stopped, only our life was discontinued. Weeks maybe months they said without treatment. WHAT? Oh no not me, not a chance. I had more life to live and more to give than just an exsistance. My life was for a reason and I was going to fight and make sure I lived that life so others could be blessed. The cancer may be real, the effect may be real. Even the world not stopping was real, but so was my stubborn determination to make my life count. 

Cancer is a lonely road to find yourself on, but trust me it’s the stubbornness to survive that has given me the breath I breath today. Nearly 6 years ago I heard those words, then heard them again last year. But I was also able to hear the words that I heard 1 year ago. “You are in remission” I was at 4a once upon a time, the closest to terminal you can get to with out actually losing hope in the life you had. I am not saying that things are normal again. Because they are not, but what they are is honest, real, reflective, and Gracious. I am grateful for the breath that I breath, and want to love those around me. Care for people where once I did not even concider them. Please God forgive me for that. Who ever you are, whatever your going through, when someone hears the words “You have cancer” right then at that moment is when your life changes forever. Dare I even say, cancer will give you gifts along the way. It will be lonely, it will be something that’s an interference but ultimately you can help others  too.

Just stand up and do, don’t live a life with regret. You have a life, Live it.

Fonz

 
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, taken whilst creating memories.

Copyright © 2016

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It’s about determination.

Tags

belief, determination, eu, fear, fulfilment.grace, hope, love, referendum

This weekend I have had the honour of meeting many people, yet I should not really be here myself. I when I got cancer the second time realised I could let it beat me, or I could fight. So like I had the pleasure of sharing this weekend, the first post I wrote was. ” I am Mark, a cancer fighter. I will win!” Arrogant, or determined. Well arrogance is not based on what is not seen, so I would say determination. In life, it’s what we choose to do that matters, what we choose to not do has no effect on our lives, except negative. What really? Well yes because doing nothing is erm just that isn’t it, doing NOTHING.


I love people that do with thier lives, people that say yes to doing rather than making an excuse not to do. Are you with me? Ok so people that want to do and don’t just say they will but do do. I saw pictures today that would be hard for some to comprehend. Like a hook as big as a house. Yea like I said some will not be able to imagine. There is a point to this trust me. 

So for me giving up in that room was the easiest, it was really really easy to just let go of my life that my parents had given me. They had joined together and made me, I was made in love through their passion and love for each other. Now whilst I may never totally understand my parents, I do want to thank them for my life. But do I just have them to thank, do I not also have someone else to thank much greater and knowledgable than me. Do I not have my maker to thank, the person that put my parents together. Well that’s thanks to Bible collage, yea I know wild right. 

It does not matter how your life started, it matters how you value what you are, who you are and what you stand for. what your life means. Well for me mine is a statement of what can be achieved. We live in a generation where we hear of much going on all around us on social media. Love hate and much inbetween. Yet it’s our choice still what we choose to do or not to do. I have chosen in the past to hate, and I was proberbly hated aswell. But I have this to tell you today, loving someone and being loved by someone is a gift you give and a gift you take given to you by someone else. People choose to love you and I find the most amazing times I have had since choosing to beat cancer have been choosing to be myself. To be who I am, for years before cancer I had times where I tried to please others by being something. But not me. I did try to be a person I did not know. Tried maybe to impress where there was no need, forgetting that the real me was actually me.

That the real me was the best me there is and was. That I am not a failure, I am not living a life for nothing. So I leave you with this statement. 

“The real you is the best you, just be you”! 

Trust me if someone does not want to be in your future it’s their loss.

Fonz

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, taken whilst creating memories.

Copyright © 2016

1 step, 1 punch, 1 round at a time.

Tags

creed, determination, faith, fight, hope, love, rocky

1 step, 1 punch, 1 round at a time.
Advice I most definitely would dispatch to anyone fighting cancer, don’t look to far ahead, look at the hear and now and getting through that. Because in my mind, that’s all someone can do when the odds don’t seem in your favour. My favourite films are the Rocky films, I must have watched them a thousand times. During my hospital stay, having my transplant. I would say (the wife gave the statistics to me, she was there to) I watched rocky 3 and 4 over and over for 4 10 days straight. 

For me anyway it was always about getting through those impossible minutes. Gaining victory every minute, because I realised early on that a second was possible in that room, but a minutia was not. But I could string 60 seconds together to make an impossible minute. And string 60 of those together to make an hour eventually 20 days later I was on the way home. 

  
You see the only thing getting in the way of you and cancer, is you. You are the only way to beat cancer, even if you are terminal ( which we all are) it’s your willingness to fight that stands between you and a smile. You choose to sit where you do and wallow. You also choose to use what’s available to you and make something happen. Even if it is a walk in the garden, and I know how hard a walk in the garden can be. 

  
Photographs of your garden, listening to the conversation that is the planet is in your hands, and choices. Choose to fight every second to get to the end and here those words. The words you crave to hear, make a difference with your life. It’s yours after all, we will all die one day. Don’t feel sorry that will happen, feel amazing you had and have a life to live today!
So we have just finished watching Creed, I feel amazing that I am in my 48th year really amazed we got here, I have my wife and the power that’s in the name of Jesus to thank for that. Because that is where my strength came from. Choose to fight, 1 step at a time.
Fonz 
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.

I am blessed to be alive.

Tags

alive, blessed, chemotheropy, courage, determination, fight, life

How are you all today? I know some of you will not be great others like me will be over the moon to be able to open my eyes once again. To have a new day to live, I feel blessed just to have the chance at a new life. Today is my mums birthday, and whilst I won’t see her today I shall on Sunday with the whole family as we share a meal together to celebrate our mum being 70 years old. I may do a blog just for her later but for now I want to talk to you about how wonderful life is.

  
You see we are the ones that have doctors with knowledge, hospitals with people in them passionate about saving lives, they work tirelessly to help us win our battles, there are so many people that dedicate their lives to us getting better. How grateful I am to be awake today, to have a full day ahead of me to enjoy or endure. Today I am going to choose to enjoy not endure. Many times whilst I was having treatment I had fun with the nurses, doctors, cleaners whoever. As far as I was concerned they are all a link in a chain that made it possible for me to get my life back.

I am for sure a blessed man, not a cursed man because I had cancer I was chosen possibly to have it, I do for sure see the world through different eyes, I am more sensitive, more loving and more appreciative of what I do have not what I could have. It was the same when I had cancer, I was appreciative of the the people I had to care for me as opposed to being downtroddon that I even had to go through the journey they call cancer.

  Picture from http://www.thelaughterward.com
When you see life like this, it’s suprising how soon the world around you changes. All because of your attitude to the desease.  Is there really a reason I got it to encourage others on their journey. Was I really chosen to have cancer because cancer needs someone like me to have it? Well I Don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know I am blessed to have today.. As they say in the US of A. 

Have a blessed day.

Fonz

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.

Determination.

Tags

belief, best, determination, energy, faith, family, friends, giving, hope, love

Your will and desire to overcome? Is it a choice, or is it part of your nature? What makes someone want to carry on or even have the drive to carry on? Well here is my experience of it, what I think and how I have managed to maintain my determination. 

  
For me it’s about happiness, it’s about love and enjoyment. When you have spent quality time with quality people that have a quality mindset or as one of my best friends says (Proper people) your desire to want more of that in life changes. For me it makes me determined to make sure my cancer does not return, making sure I eat well, that I have a nutritionally balanced diet. That life is quality in all areas, I was having a conversation with my Andie today. I was saying how I must never have to go in isolation ever again, I got quite upset thinking that if I did what I would miss out on. The company of my good friends, the quality moments that allot of us take for granted. The nice things in life that we all enjoy, the peace, the feelings that others give to us because they care about us. We can’t change the actions of selfish people that only think for themselves, but we can make sure the friends we have are quality. 

  
It’s funny you know, how people have been towards me having cancer. It’s also amazing how good Some people have been, people tend to bless good people. I am for sure a blessed man, I write this knowing the people in my life now are there for a reason, and the ones that are not in it now because they have chosen not to be, have no place in my future anyway. The good people I have met give me energy, they help me to stay determined to keep cancer at bay. I always say if a friend does not make your life better then they were never a friend in the first place. 

  
So my conclusion, for me there has to be something to look forward to in life, there has to be a reason. There has to be something that drives us every day to remain determined. This blog you are reading right now helps me be determined because I know that others are touched by it. We had a dinner party last night for our anniversary, we were with Proper people. People that gave me energy and I hope we did them to. It’s about doing our best, and being the best you there is. One thing is for certain I am more determined than I ever was to remain cancer free. I have to much life to live, and to much love to give. I cannot and must not get ill again. The people I speak of in this blog know who they are, the ones that have turned their backs on us know who they are to. 

  
Friends are the family we choose, they help us to remain positive and determined.

Choose well.

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.

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.

Picc line Removed.

Tags

aim, belief, bone marrow, breast, cancer, cars, chemo, chemotheropy, cure, desire, determination, doctor, facebook, family, fonz, football, games, given, goal, GOD, grateful, happy, healed, holiday, hospital, lost, love, mobility, motivation, nurse, painful, prayer, real, reality, rescued, sales, skin, strength, taken, tennis, transplant, treatment, ward, world

chemotheropy with a picc line is a great way to have it administered. It’s a small tube placed in your arm into a vien going to a main archery near your heart. Mine was 35 cm long. I had mine fitted in January to have my ICE chemo. It’s a real pain having it as it protrudes from your body and it’s uncomfortable sometimes. That line became my friend, because with it in there are no more injections to take your blood. 

Well today was the day I had to say goodbye to that friend, but it also signified that I would not be having treatment at southport anymore. It was a little emotional saying Thankyou to all my day care nurses at southport oncology. But somehow a relief that we had completed the journey with no hick ups. This will take me to a small space in royal Liverpool hospital for 4 weeks where I will have to have my transplant. I can see light at the end of the tunnel now. That day I dream of is coming nearer.

You can find details of my journey on 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1595998743956536/
A 7 year fight all because of a lump. Still I stand, time to dig in once again next week and see off this Cancer once and for all.. 

 

Fonz

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