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Well, so there we were, waiting for the Children’s Hospital to ring us to tell us the diagnosis. This wait was going on a bit too long for the OSO. That, however, is a relative term for her because two people in front of her represents a huge queue!

Mum knew the Sister in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital, so she asked her who was the consultant oncologist and had they heard from the Birmingham Hospital with the results of my biopsy. Turned out that they hadn’t so Mum then rang the oncology department and that confirmed that they hadn’t heard anything, and this was the best part of a week since I had the chunk cut out of my hand. The OSO was not amused! So she rang the Birmingham Hospital and after listening to several renditions of The Water Music (which she had always really liked until then) she finally got to speak to the secretary or PA of the chap who had chopped into me. It turned out that his report was still sitting on a Dictaphone tape on this person’s desk and she hadn’t got round to typing it up and sending it to the consultant oncologist at S.C.H. (got fed up of writing it all out) and it was marked as urgent! Goodness knows how the non urgent ones had been sitting there!

I don’t think you can imagine the earful that poor person got from the OSO, but in fairness, she should have got it done ages before.

Suffice it to say that the S.C.H. consultant oncologist had the report sitting on her desk pronto and she then rang us to arrange for us to go in and see her sharpish.

So Mum Dad and I went in the next day. The top lady was really nice even though she had to tell us that I managed to acquire a really rare nasty cancer (though I suppose you couldn’t have a nice one; it’s a bit like when you hear the traffic reports on the radio and they say there has been a nasty accident, what’s the alternative, a nice one?!). it seemed that this cancer normally manifested itself in the abdomen, but I had managed to get it in my hand, well I always did like to be different! It was usually terminal because it was very difficult to treat.

There you go, at the grand old age of 15, I had managed to acquire two terminal illnesses.

Not much you can say about that.

There was then a debate to be had to see if I wanted treatment bearing in mind I already had a short life expectancy in view of my Muscular Dystrophy. Bit tricky as we had to decide like now! I was a bit shocked to say the least in that I knew the MD would shorten my life but I was never really sure by how much. Mum, Dad and I went off for a little walk and wheel round in my case to decide what to do.

We, well I decided I wanted the treatment as I wanted to fight the cancer, as I had done ok so far with the MD. I don’t think Mum and Dad were so sure, but they went along with my decision, so we went back in to see the consultant.

She wanted to run more types of scans and tests to see if the cancer was anywhere else in my body and then I would have to have surgery to have a Hickman line (you can look it up on google if you want to know exactly what it is) put in my chest so my chemotherapy could go in that way rather than having loads of injections.

So the next day the OSO and I were back at the hospital (where we were to spend a lot of time) having a barrage of horrid tests and then I had to go into surgery to have the line put in. After the surgery I would have to go into intensive care for a day or so. I didn’t mind that just so long as they didn’t do it with a local again. We were in the middle of the last test and one of the nurses came to find us to say I was needed in surgery, there’s nothing like being popular!

I woke up in intensive care, and yes the OSO was there again but she was chatting to her mate who was the sister in intensive care. I came round quite well so after a day I was up on the general ward waiting for my first lot of chemotherapy. Whoopee!!