{"id":40,"date":"2024-04-27T12:01:40","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T11:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=40"},"modified":"2024-04-27T12:03:58","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T11:03:58","slug":"the-biggest-challenges-in-life-arent-likely-to-be-freely-chosen-and-physical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2024\/04\/27\/the-biggest-challenges-in-life-arent-likely-to-be-freely-chosen-and-physical\/","title":{"rendered":"The biggest challenges in life aren\u2019t likely to be freely chosen and physical"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">Pre-cancer. I&#8217;d have felt the achievements cycling as massive but I&#8217;ve since realised there can be far greater life achievements, just they tend to be not as easy to hear or talk about (unless there\u2019s a happy ending). I expect these happen alot behind closed doors. So I&#8217;m going to do the opposite and air mine before I die. I&#8217;ve already posted the rare stable times I had in my on going hospital stay (times which I used to full extent). Here&#8217;s the other side.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">Thanks to all those who read this, as always please don&#8217;t go straight to the like button and much better add a relevant comment instead. So I&#8217;ll summarise the key stats and then the challenge\/ journey which I&#8217;m to come out the other side of.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<ul>\n<li dir=\"auto\">Hospital duration and counting 27 days<\/li>\n<li dir=\"auto\">Proportion of time spent in pain over that time 70 percent , around half of that extreme.<\/li>\n<li dir=\"auto\">10 percent in extreme tiredness and dehydration<\/li>\n<li dir=\"auto\">Weight loss around 4kg<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\"><strong>Treatments so far:<\/strong><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li dir=\"auto\">Sigmoidoscopy whilst it was going to be more panful than normal given my bowel wasn\u2019t and couldn\u2019t be emptied. To make the procedure quicker I chose no pain relief and partly as and the pain made little difference on top of what I was already in<\/li>\n<li dir=\"auto\">\u00a0One full enema leading to extreme sickness for the next day to flush stomach out<\/li>\n<li dir=\"auto\">Meds to counteract pain (but often unable to) included. Continual IV paracetamol at max or near max daily dose. Same for buscopan, slow release morphine. Fast acting morphine as required. Often 10 ml at night. Or faster acting , more powerful through an injection site. Fluid IVs and feeding tubes used and now permanently in place ahead of operation.<\/li>\n<li dir=\"auto\">Several CT scans with contrasts. One causing a temperature spike raising my temperature from 36 deg to 38 deg within 5 minutes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\"><strong>So my victory<\/strong><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Well I&#8217;m still here fighting to live and get better. My quality of life had gone so low I even wanted to give up near the end on a couple of occasions. The duration of pain and intensity was the toughest I&#8217;d experienced (and I already have alot of experience here&#8230;). In reality I\u2019m only part way through this challenge which will involve a further operation and 2 weeks in hospital before further recovery at home.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">My reward will be a mixed one. In the meantime the cancer inside me has grown, I\u2019ll be somewhat \u201cmore\u201d terminal and the next health challenge unlikely to be far away. However to get some sort of quality of life back in the near term and quality time with family will still be a great reward and worth it.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">The most successful challenges rarely happen alone. Massive thanks to my wife for being such a rock and keeping me strong. Also to my mum, dad and sister for your visits and strength. Also to our friends who enabled my family to visit alot by looking after my children. Thank you all.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">I sit here about to have significant surgery and ileostomy (to all intents permanent), which will make diet and toilet breaks very different. I&#8217;m not quite as apprehensive as I would otherwise be thanks to this recent life challenge which seems to make all my cycling and running challenges feel quite insignificant in comparison. Due to scale and importance.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a\">\n<div dir=\"auto\">Thanks all Glenn aka <a class=\"x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1fey0fg xo1l8bm\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/glennthecancerwarrior?__eep__=6&amp;__cft__[0]=AZWqgzOLqKkPB0so5FoKW5-MKQnxVDvS1j1rcbEjRrAy699MB2YVPAy5qwh-I6csvVj9fp6CZ62G_rYlxDZ3eSAIHGMDWkAo2jh1wH5337Bnls0d5nd1e6wpY371EuVRjls&amp;__tn__=*NK-R\">#glennthecancerwarrior<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pre-cancer. I&#8217;d have felt the achievements cycling as massive but I&#8217;ve since realised there can be far greater life achievements, just they tend to be not as easy to hear or talk about (unless there\u2019s a happy ending). I expect these happen alot behind closed doors. So I&#8217;m going to do the opposite and air [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/42"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennthecancerwarrior.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}