Paul Middleton – My Cancer Journey

It’s been a while since my first post, I have struggled to find the motivation and time to write but I thought as promised in my previous post I would update you on my September adventures.

I had the whole of September off work and cycled the Outer Hebrides in Scotland with two friends, bike packing and Camping, it was an amazing adventure and such a beautiful place. After 9 days my friends had to leave for work and I continued with my journey on two wheels and travelled in the Cairngorms in Scotland solo. That was an amazing time also but very different as it put me in a position to have more time to think about things, family, life and what would happen next on my cancer journey.

My thoughts were also saying to me, will this be the last time I do a trip like this ever again or will I beat this disease and extend my life beyond expectations. I enjoyed an amazing 600 miles on two wheels!

I ran the Cardiff half marathon on the 1st October with my 17 old daughter Molly, amazing to spend this time with her, it was emotional but spectacular as it was her first experience in an event like this, she had only been running for a few months and she smashed it and raised money for Bowel Cancer Uk!

I also knew I had a battle on my hands when I got home as after only a week at work, I went into hospital for a liver resection, basically open surgery to remove several tumours from my liver. The procedure did go reasonably well, later discovered that I still have 2 tumours that did not appear at operation but have now returned plus two new ones so on that journey to address these again.

In January I also underwent some radiotherapy to blast three small tumours on my lungs, which I am waiting for the results for that to work, hopefully it worked and I will update you in a future post.

Unfortunately I had a set back in February as they had put me on a lower dose of chemotherapy post Liver and Lung treatments to see if that could keep me stable but it did not work.

So for the next few months I am back on the full dose of chemo, fingers crossed that gives me some good results.

It’s been a roller coaster journey so far after 6.5 years of this disease but the last 4-6 weeks has been the toughest with the set back.

I have my odd bad days but I remain positive, started running again and eating well so doing what ever I can to help.

I also recently joined a cancer support group called The Cancer Club which is just for men and has really helped me, simply the group gets men talking, which is brilliant.

That’s all for now, going to try and update my blog more regularly going forward, perhaps with shorter updates.

Hope everyone keeps safe and thanks for getting this far.