I went for a hearing test and on receipt of the results was asked to come to another appointment, only this time to bring my military medical notes. On attending the new appointment, the brilliant ENT consultant sat and read through my medical notes from cover to cover. By the end he closed the file then asked me to follow him. Seeing immediately that what he had spotted was a direct result of my military service, he put me to the front of the queue. He took me to a CT scanner, told the next guy he had to wait a little longer, then conducted a head scan. A relatively short time later he received the results and was delighted to see that his initial suspicion of a cholesteatoma in my right ear was correct but then his mood darkened. The radiologists had spotted a shadow on my brain. He took me to the MRI scanner and this time a lady had to wait while he had a full body scan conducted on me. After many hours of nervous waiting, the results were confirmed. I had a brain tumour as well as a cholesteatoma. He arranged an appointment with a brain surgeon for the next day. I turned up for my appointment and on walking into the room the surgeon pretended to fall off his chair. Having seen only my scan, he had expected me to be wheeled in in a chair. When he was surprised that I was speaking quite so clearly, I started to realise that this was far more serious than I thought. I discovered that this brain tumour was in my right temporal lobe and the size and shape of a small tarantula spider. As I still had no symptoms, we agreed to watch and wait and I left with a warning from him that 80% of patients with a tumour of such a size will develop epilepsy. I looked him in the eye and declared that I will be in the 20% that don’t.

My wife crumpled and spent three days grieving. Meanwhile, I realised that I had to tell the children so they did not start to feel excluded or naughty from whisperings in the house. So they could start to understand what was going on. When they returned from school, I made the children’s tea and, while we were eating, broke the news so very gently to them while letting them know that as I had no symptoms I was sure that I could be healed. My reassurances fell on deaf ears. Just at the very mention of brain tumour my daughter collapsed into a sobbing mass at the table. No matter how much I hugged her, she couldn’t stop crying. My son sat and went whiter and whiter like he was going in to shock. Again, no matter how much I hugged him, he struggled. Over time my reassurances started to take effect and we were able to look at the positives and possibilities of treatment. We had hope.

My ENT consultant was determined to rid my right ear of the cholesteatoma prior to treatment for my tumour starting, in order to save as much of the hearing in my right ear as possible. Surgery confirmed that the cholesteatoma had done more damage than thought. In order to stop it, he had to remove the entirety of my right inner ear. On waking I discovered that I had no balance; I had to learn to walk again. Despite my ENT consultant’s best efforts, I was now stone deaf in my right ear.

A few months later, after sending my wife to work and children to school, I went to the loo and woke up on the bathroom floor with my trousers around my ankles, paralysed from the neck down. I shouted for help, but no help came. Eventually some movement came into my left side. Gradually I started to gather myself. I managed to pull up my trousers and slither downstairs, a little like a damaged snake. I managed to get the phone and haul myself onto the sofa. Using my left hand I just didn’t seem to be able to get the phone to work and eventually realised I was trying to call on the TV remote. I needed help and managed to get out of the front door and collapse against my neighbours’ door. They were brilliant and looked after me until the ambulance arrived. Over the next twenty-four hours, my mobility returned and I was discharged home.

The tumour had jumped to a higher grade, so I elected to go in for surgery while looking my surgeon in the eyes and begging him not to put me in a wheelchair. I woke up to discover that he could only remove 40% of the tumour. The remaining 60% of the tumour was buried far too deep in the brain.

On receipt of the results of the post-op biopsy, I had a confirmed diagnosis. A grade 3 Anaplastic Oligodendroglioma. My treatment team then confirmed that they couldn’t shrink, kill or cure my brain tumour, that it was terminal, that with conventional treatment I had a prognosis of between three and twenty years.

My insurance company then sent my records to the world leading expert in my particular type of tumour in the USA. The hope was that he would have a cure which would be cheaper for the insurance company than paying off my new mortgage. My last great hope reported back that it was terminal, that I had a prognosis of, at best, three years preceded by a rapid decline towards becoming a cognitive and motor-function vegetable. As I read his report alone in the house, for the first time, I broke down into great heaving sobs at the kitchen table. My world started to crumble around me. My insurance paid off the mortgage, yet still my marriage fell apart with no hope of saving it. I found myself sleeping on a B&Q camp bed in the unheated study of the house. I had to surrender my driving licence and my gun licence. I could no longer coach the boys’ rugby or be a Scout leader for fear of having an epileptic seizure in front of them. Shortly after our separation, for the sake of the children, I had to leave the house and will never forget holding the quivering bodies of my children close as I said goodbye and promised them that no matter what, I would always be close by, that I would always be there for them. I was homeless with a terminal disease. The social housing waiting list was years long and I had not got the money to buy or rent a flat and neither could I find a company that would give me a mortgage while I had a three-year prognosis. I would have been sofa-surfing had it not been for the generosity of a man I barely knew from Doune who let me stay in his mother’s flat after she had passed. All I had to do was pay the council tax. I couldn’t afford any furniture so built cardboard furniture from boxes and electrical tape donated by the village shop but even though the bookcases were brilliant I couldn’t build a chair that would take my weight. Some friends lent me a table and chairs to eat off and pound stretcher provided some cutlery that bent when trying to cut anything tougher than butter. Pound stretcher also provided crockery and other bits and pieces with which to run and clean my home. It became clear that both the cholesteatoma and the brain tumour were triggered by two blunt force traumas to the right temporal lobe, sustained within a few months of each other during the early part of my army service; the blows in the boxing ring and on the frozen rugby pitch were confirmed, and my War Disablement Pension started to develop. I finally managed to afford a second-hand bed for my daughter and a fold up granny bed for my son. I found some cheap bedding, standing lamps and bedside tables for their bedrooms in the hope that they would come to stay. They would come often after school, and I longed to see them more but did not want to apply pressure on them to have to come to see Dad rather than spend time with their friends. To keep their rooms available to them, I slept on the B&Q camp bed in the sitting room.

With a terminal prognosis it was too easy to curl up into a ball under the duvet and wait for the lights to go out. I was briefly tempted to not take my anti-seizure medication one night and the next morning and to run a long hot bath in the morning, get in, lie back and wait for the seizure to take me away. Sudden unexpected death due to epilepsy (SUDEP). Not suicide, just an unfortunate fatal accident. But I didn’t want the children to find me dead in my bath and I wanted to see the children grow in age and experience prior to my demise. I wanted them to have some happy memories of time with Daddy. I wanted to see them grow into adults so I decided to fight back.

I joined the village cricket team for some companionship and ended up, to no surprise, becoming the scorer. But I kept trying.

I dived head first into Doctor Google and as a result tried the acid/alkali diet, the raw vegan diet, the juicing diet, the smoothie diet and finally the Chris beat cancer diet. As a result I had lit a fire within my own body and was in insane amounts of pain internally with constant flatulence. I needed an entire course of additional treatment in order to calm the fire and ease the pain. My brilliant treatment team gave me access to a brilliant dietician and lifestyle coach who gave me a good slap before helping me design my balanced daily lifestyle designed to reinforce my immune system, while attacking my cancer, in reinforcement to my treatment through diet and exercise. Please read on to learn more.