{"id":19466,"date":"2021-06-30T16:20:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T15:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/?p=19466"},"modified":"2021-06-30T16:20:53","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T15:20:53","slug":"frustration-at-trying-to-get-oesophageal-cancer-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/2021\/06\/frustration-at-trying-to-get-oesophageal-cancer-diagnosis\/","title":{"rendered":"Frustration At Trying To Get Oesophageal Cancer Diagnosis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Sean Greer, from Bangor, who is a survivor of oesophogeal cancer tells his story for the latest OG Cancer NI awareness campaign CATCH IT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The symptoms of oesophageal-gastric junction cancer are vague and difficult to determine, but when Sean Greer was sitting in front of a bowl of soup for lunch and finding it really difficult to eat it \u2013 feeling like it was climbing a hill \u2013 he knew there was something wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy first recollection of feeling that something was unusual,\u201d Sean said, \u201cwas back in September 2019. I\u2019m in a drama club and I remember going down to rehearsals on Sunday afternoons and the feeling I had was that my stomach wasn\u2019t right. I was slightly nauseous and I couldn\u2019t tell if I was full or hungry, which sounds a bit strange, but from then on the messages that my stomach was sending to my brain didn\u2019t seem to make any sense. I had this sense of \u201cHave I not eaten enough?\u201d or \u201cAm I too full?\u201d There was this strange, uncomfortable feeling, but it didn\u2019t stop me from doing anything. Eventually, however, there was just too much discomfort and so eventually I did go to the GP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHis guess was that it might be helicobacter pylori.(HP) \u2013 a bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. There was a simple test for that that proved positive, so they gave me a course of antibiotics for a week and I took those and that eradicated the HP, but it didn\u2019t make any difference to me, so my initial assumption was that the antibiotics hadn\u2019t worked. I was back at the GP in December and he had started to think it might be a kidney stone or gallstone, so he said not to worry and he referred me for an urgent endoscope. I was happy enough with that as, again, I wasn\u2019t in any terrible discomfort. I didn\u2019t think I was losing any weight but, in retrospect, I maybe had but I\u2019d never been very big anyway. If I\u2019d been 20 stone and had lost four stone, it would have been significant, but if you\u2019re nine stone and lose half a stone it\u2019s not that much.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a while, things seemed to be OK, but, by late January, Sean still hadn\u2019t heard anything and so he\u2019d started to think the GP hadn\u2019t called the hospital or hadn\u2019t made the referral, and so he called the hospital himself. It turned out that Sean\u2019s name was on the list, but the list was an incredible 72 weeks\u2019 long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know what \u2018urgent\u2019 meant,\u201d Sean continued, \u201cbut evidently \u201curgent\u201d didn\u2019t mean \u201curgent\u201d at all. That was the first big shock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMeanwhile I was starting to feel a bit more uncomfortable. It was a strange feeling in my stomach. The nausea was stronger and I wasn\u2019t enjoying eating as much, but I didn\u2019t have any problem with anything sticking or anything like that. then I started to think maybe I should try and get something done privately \u2013 reluctantly \u2013 but we had some insurance at work that had actually just come in, so I thought I would try that, but, before I did anything about that, the hospital called me in for an ultrasound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI went for the appointment in mid-March for an ultrasound and it was all clear. Everything \u2013 stomach, spleen, gall bladder \u2013 all was clear. That was good news but equally bad news because I still felt the same and now had no answer. Just the next week, everything went into lockdown and I wasn\u2019t able to get anywhere with the GP or even private clinics and they were only offering consultations over the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt just felt really uncomfortable and my stomach started to feel cramped \u2013 especially early in the morning. I stopped sleeping well and would get up in the middle of the night after two or three hours, so I\u2019d started sleeping on my back. Towards the end of April my wife and mother-in-law persuaded me to go to A & E. I knew it wouldn\u2019t help because they don\u2019t give you endoscopes at A & E, but it was my only option. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d also started to get night sweats \u2013 you wake up and your clothes are wet. You wake up after a sweat. It was surprising how wet my clothes would be. I didn\u2019t know that was a sinister symptom. When I was at A & E they treated me well but they weren\u2019t really able to do anything for me beyond the normal observations. I went to them because I had nowhere else to go. What they actually did was send my blood to the lab, asked about symptoms, felt my stomach and told me everything was fine, and keep pushing for an endoscope, which is what I really needed most. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April I was furloughed from work, but I spent a lot of time in the garden. I was really tired and I didn\u2019t know why. I think symptoms creep up incrementally on people. Some are more reluctant to heed their symptoms and avoid the GP. Because things creep up you don\u2019t take them that seriously but you just start to notice. I couldn\u2019t understand why I was so tired.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was much later in early August that my blood was taken again at the request of the hospital consultant who was now on the case after a private CT scan in July. It was then that I got a phone call from the hospital telling me my iron level was 79 and to go, almost right away, for an iron infusion, my iron levels had been slowly going down as a result of the undiscovered tumour which was growing in size.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe time period between when I went to the GP and the tumour was confirmed was about nine or ten months \u2013 between October 2019 and August 2020. I asked about the stage of the tumour several times, but consultants are very reluctant to tell you the stage because each individual varies and each cancer case varies as well. It was about ten centimetres but not in diameter; I asked the consultant if it was like a big apple but he said more like a banana.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with most patients with cancer, Sean\u2019s journey with the disease was just beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s cancer journey is two halves,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have symptoms and you\u2019re trying to get it diagnosed and that journey can be long and stressful because you know something\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s nearly like a relief to get a clear diagnosis, but then it\u2019s a scary diagnosis and then you\u2019re looking at the next road ahead which is treatment. It\u2019s bumpy too, but you\u2019re in the hands of experts. When you get the final diagnosis, it\u2019s a mixture of relief and anxiety and fear. I didn\u2019t dwell on things because I didn\u2019t want to scare myself too much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sean immediately started focussing on his recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was determined to be positive about it and I\u2019m lucky too that the people around me were very supportive as well. It\u2019s quite hard telling people. That\u2019s a stress in itself. Calling your friends and family \u2013 going round to tell your mum \u2013 even though they knew something was wrong. You have to explain it seven or eight times to different people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI read a bit about it on the internet but Dr Google can get you into lots of areas you don\u2019t want to be in. I found a good book and read it because my idea was to know your enemy. I didn\u2019t get down about it. The hospitals do move quite quickly. Chemotherapy was only a few weeks away and it was good because you felt something was being done. The chemotherapy worked quickly and eating became easier soon after the treatment. I was still anaemic for quite a while \u2013 I had to get iron infusions and I was very tired for a long time, but eventually that came back. The chemotherapy lasted until November last year and then I had a brief window of about three or four weeks in December when I could eat well and felt good. That was the best I\u2019d felt in a year. I felt I was on the road to recovery. Then I had surgery on 4 January. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m now walking every day and trying to get used to eating again. I\u2019m looking forward to getting back to work again \u2013 I think I\u2019m too young to retire. Being on furlough has been inadvertently helpful for me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a weird time for everyone but maybe even weirder for me. Furlough or not though, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to go to work at that time. My workplace was very understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sean\u2019s outlook and perspective on his experience is extremely positive and he\u2019s looking forward to what the future holds for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom here on in, I\u2019ll be getting a regular CT scan just to check everything\u2019s OK,\u201d he said. \u201cI think everyone with cancer always has that niggling fear of a return in the future and it\u2019s vital to go back to the doctor if symptoms return, but the pathology results of my surgery were very good. The consultant told me they were very confident that they got it all. My surgery was the very last one of the oesophageal-gastric cancers they operated on before they stopped all the surgeries because of Covid. I got someone else\u2019s slot because they cancelled, so I would only have been getting it now, so I consider myself extremely lucky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter experiencing oesophageal cancer, the main thing is that you feel lucky. Lucky to be alive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The symptoms of oesophageal-gastric junction cancer are vague and difficult to determine, but when Sean Greer was sitting in front of a bowl of soup for lunch and finding it really difficult to eat it \u2013 feeling like it was climbing a hill \u2013 he knew there was something wrong. \u201cMy first recollection of feeling … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19469,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19466\/revisions\/19469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}