Loz & Toz - Season 6 "The one where Toz gets Cancer"

Monday- It feels good not having to leave early doors. Thomas isnt having chemo again this week, so hes not scheduled in for Radio until 3pm as he'd usually have hours of chemo to go through first. Not having to leave until 1pm is a small win. Thomas isnt too bad today so far. Mornings are always the worst for him so a half decent morning is a good sign for a half decent day.  Parking at NGH is shit, IDST. Despite 1 in 2 people getting cancer now, only 1 in 5000 will get a parking space at Northampton General hospital. Oncology car park consists of about 5 regular spaces, 6 disabled and 6 electric car charging bays. And yet despite big "Oncology Patients Only" signs everywhere, you often see people parking and walking off to other parts of the hospital. Even staff from other departments take up valuable spaces. (Dont worry yourselves, everyone with cancer can walk another mile because you are a lazy inconsiderate @£#&!!) I've nearly lost my shit there a few times ...

Tuesday. Up and at em. Everything is ready to go. My mum arrives and I have a coffee with her before I wake Thomas. Today he has his usual blast of radio lined up, then he has an unscheduled meeting with his Oncology doctor - Dr Rawther because of yesterday's situation. (Usually, he would just have met with him at the beginning and end of treatment.) And then its 2 scheduled meetings with Maz and Jen the Dietician.  I go to wake him and he's awake, but the difference from yesterday is instantly noticeable.  "How you feeling?" (Always feel a twat asking this but it's just so I can try and support him in the right way at that given time) "Alright" he says with what almost looks like a smile 🥹 "...my mouth was sore through the night though".  His mouth is beginning to feel the brunt of treatment now. Hes got ulcers, sores, his gums are red and swollen and its hurting to swallow. Up to now he's only had paracetamol for pain relief but even the...

Monday morning. Week 3. Up with the birds. Priority coffee, making sure everything is ready for the girls, ironing clothes for me and Thomas and making sure both our bags have got everything we might need - diary, anti-sickness, paracetamol, radiotherapy cream, sunglasses, charger, headphones, xylitol gum, purse, wallet, phones, 3 French hens and a posse of Peruvian pan-pipers... Thomas gets up and straight away he's not good. Feels sick. Groggy. Emotional. It's a bad start from the minute he opens his eyes today. It's been the worst night yet that he's had for mouth pain too. He's in a bad way and he looks the way he feels.  We get to Northampton on time and it's business as usual. Weigh-in 73.4kg. The book goes in the basket and he picks a chair. The more days that are passing, the sicker he looks 😔 which is hard to see given that Thomas was in some of the best shape he's ever been in when this nightmare began. But today's the poorliest he's looke...

Yes actually, it was that bad 👎🏻 I swear to god, I feel like a mug for hugely underestimating just what this poor guy has got to go through. (And i have a vivid imagination so what i did imagine was pretty grim. But nothing prepares you for the reality)   MONDAY MORNING WEEK 2 - Lets fucking goooo 💪🏻 I go to wake Thomas and like most days, hes already awake because hes not really slept.  "You ok babe?" - No.  "Whats going on?" - My insides have come out. "What? What do you mean? - Exactly what I said.  Now, if anyone knows Toz, they'll know hes not into toilet humour (which is a shame because farts are funny if you give them a chance 😂) and hes somewhat prudish when it comes to butt's and stuff (im giggling like fuck writing this because im very immature) So when I sheepishly asked him "can I have a look? And he rolled over without a moments hesitation - I knew it was bad.  I take a look and hoooly fuck. Its bad. Its a fleshy mass, approx the ...

Hello beautiful people 💕  Neither of us slept too well the night before. Thomas hasn't been sleeping at all tbh. Its been a couple of weeks now and its really starting to effect him.  Chemo  took longer than expected because of the bloody iv situation, but there's no concerns. Thomas scores 77.8kg on his first weigh-in, which is just over 12 stone. He was advised to eat as much as possible in the build up so as to have a healthy reserve to lose when the weight starts coming off. (We later found out this was NOT what the dietician would have advised at all 😬 mostly due to the fact that he would drop back to to his standard weight quicker, leaving his mask loose. Luckily that's not happened....yet)  The chemo suite has the most wonderfully brave and positive people in it. Terminal people chatting away and showing courage you cant imagine having (and wouldnt want to imagine either.) It also has a lot of poorly looking people in head scarves and blankets that appear to...

Hey everyone ❤️ Before I document week one, I thought id do one more first, detailing each treatment, just in case it helps anyone else out.  Mondays. Shittest day of the week anyway but now a tad shitter. Mondays are Thomas's Chemo days. (It's radiotherapy day too but the only day of the week he has chemotherapy as well. The process is - arrive, get weighed, pick a chair and wait for your canula to arrive. The chairs are comfy recliners with a little table,  a chair for your companion if you have one and an IV machine.  The chairs are all in rows similar to a hair salon, but unfortunately, you dont leave with a bouncy blow-dry and up to speed with the latest gossip in town, you tend to leave with a bald head and up to speed on a list of drugs as long as your arm.  First up is the canula. Thomas hates this part and I find it wild that when they flush it through he tastes it instantly. Ive never tasted an iv flush in all the canulas I've had over the years. (Starting ...

Sorry for the multiple posts in rapid succession everyone. I'm trying to catch up to where we are at now so that I can just start making them on a Monday about the week before, whilst we are at the hospital all day.  So where are we at now? Ahh yes...Pinhead. The scary motherfucking radiotherapy mask. For them to pinpoint the exact spots that they need to treat, the mask is created for each patient, to hold them tightly in place, ensuring no movement, making sure there's as little damage to healthy areas as possible.  The process. Another beautiful, warm, friendly nurse takes Thomas and me into a room with a bed in the middle that goes up and down, some medical stuff and a little oven-type thing.  Thomas lies on the bed and gets raised to their workable level. First, they take a sheet of flat plastic that's head and shoulder shaped. (think target practice head and shoulders) They pop it in the oven to soften the bitch up. Then it's placed over his head and chest area an...

You take your tonsils out, your feeding tube in, tooth out, bloods done, cancer can get in the bin. (Please tell me you read that in the tune of the hokey cokey, because if not - please read it again 🤭) Im guna take you back to the 2nd October which was the day after the feeding tube went in and 5 days before the tooth was removed. The universe, not quite content with the current stress levels, decided to test us further with a cheeky little syncope seizure! (Thanks for that, another challenge is JUST what we'd hoped for right now 😭)  A syncope seizure is just fainting and the involuntary movements your body sometimes makes when you do. But when you've never seen someone have one, especially when they have just had multiple procedures following a cancer diagnosis, its pretty fucking scary. Brain instantly screaming " OH MY GOD HES DYING!!!!" - "Not fucking helpful brain, shut the fuck up so I can deal with this!"  How did we get here then? Well, like all t...

After the initial shock subsides you know you need to get your head in the game and prepare for what lies ahead.  Before treatment even starts, there’s a surprising amount of… well, fucking everything. It’s similar to planning a wedding, i guess. But instead of cake, MOH and wedding gown decisions, its chemo, MRIs and hospital gowns.  The prep work that Thomas had to go through for the next couple of months was intense.  SCAN CENTRAL! CT scans, MRIs and a then a PET scan when the CTs and MRIs didn't show the detail they needed. Up until current day Thomas still says the tracer they inject for the CT is the worst thing hes had done. It makes him instantly nauseous and gag. "Can you lie still for us Mr Swanston" 😳 "Im fucking trying mate, GAG" The PET scan showed hot spots on his tonsils, tongue, lymph nodes and to our absolute horror, a spot on his kidneys. (Cue another Lozza breakdown) Has it metastized? They gave him another CT of the kidneys (yay more tracer ...

"I've got a lump on my neck" - I took a look, running my fingers down each side of his neck. It felt like one of his glands were swollen. Well, long story short, it didnt go away and he went and got it checked out. An x-ray showed a small 2cm mass on one side and a few smaller ones on the other. At this point nobody seemed overly concerned and he was referred to ENT. They however, took one look at his referral and requested an urgent biopsy of the lump.   During the wait for results, Thomas and his brother and cousin went to Wales for a night camping and climbing Snowdon. I'm normally there with them, navigating. But this time I was at home sending maps and routes and instructions on staying safe.  They set off feeling chipper, Thomas's brother had been wanting to get up Snowdon for ages and their cousin seemed buzzing for it too.  I get a call from Thomas about 9am who was a bit stressed and a bit lost 😂 he sends me their location and i reply "that doesnt l...