A week after the operation, as expected, I had a call from Mr W’s secretary when I was at work. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it was her number. I’d been expecting it but it was still a shock. I shut my office door, took a deep breath and answered the phone. She said that they had the results and Mr W needed to see me in his office at the Bath clinic. She asked if I could get there later that morning. My heart sank. Again. Mr W was a busy and expensive man to see. He wouldn’t waste his time or my insurance company’s money to meet me just to say everything’s rosy. I told her I could get there whenever they needed me to and we arranged a time a couple of hours later. I called Kathy and told her the news. She was more positive than me. I’m not sure if she was trying to put a positive spin on things for my benefit or she really didn’t appreciate the situation but we arranged that she’d leave work and come to see Mr W with me.

A couple of hours later and we were called into Mr W’s office to hear the results. I was completely resigned to the fact that it was bad news. Why would he have arranged to meet us in person otherwise? As is his way, he didn’t waste any time dancing round the issue. We sat down and he opened the large brown file and said he was afraid the result was positive. It was Malignant Melanoma. He didn’t say I had cancer but he didn’t have to say it. I had cancer. It was a strange situation. Maybe because I was resigned to the fact it was bad news or maybe because he then started going straight into the detail and next steps but I didn’t have the sledgehammer moment that I expected or that others talk about when told they have cancer. I think Kathy had more of that experience than I did. I was quite calm and trying to take in as much as I could of what Mr W was saying but then I turned to look at Kathy next to me and she was visibly shocked. I put my hand on her knee and told her it would all be ok but she was clearly surprised by the whole situation.

I had found out during my spells on Google that if the result was bad then one of the key things was how deep the melanoma was into the skin. The deeper it was, the worse the prognosis. They categorised the depth as less than 1mm, 1mm – 2mm, 2mm – 4mm and over 4mm. I asked how deep it had been and Mr W glanced at the file. He took a look at page 3 and told us that it had been 6mm deep. I was worried. I knew that was NOT good. The top end of the scale finished at 4mm and I was at 6mm. Mr W didn’t seem 100% comfortable though. He read it again and confirmed it was 6mm. He flicked forward to the covering page and then back to page 3. He did this 3 or 4 times as he was clearly trying to check some details. His expression then noticeably changed. He was relieved but at the same time embarrassed. He apologised profusely and told us that it had been 2.6mm deep, not 6mm. He then proceeded to tell us that the reading on the second page had initially been 2.6mm…….until someone had put a hole punch through the paper and completely eliminated the “2.” bit of the reading! Kathy put forward her most meaningful contribution so far to discussions; “Are you fucking serious?” He was. I was delighted. He was mortified. Kathy shook her head and muttered something about incompetent administration.

We carried on discussing the next stages and the options available. The main process of taking more flesh out from around the original mole (WLE) was still part of the plan but there were a few more procedures now recommended. I would be sent for a needle biopsy on my groin lymph nodes to see if any cells in the lymph nodes were malignant. I would also have an ultrasound scan on the same area to check that none of them were swollen with malignant tumours. Neither of those sounded too scary but he must’ve been saving the best til last. Mr W said that I would need a full organ CT / MRI scan to see if the cancer has spread to any of my major organs. After a decent amount of explanation and justification, the best reason I could come up with for this was that if the cancer had already spread to any major organs then I was pretty much buggered. If the melanoma spreads to another part of the body other than the primary site then it is classed as stage 4, out of 4. It is deemed as terminal and the 5 year survival rate is approx 15%. Put another way, the chances of living for another 5 years would be 1 in 6. If 6 people all had an identical condition then 1 of the 6 would live another 5 years. Statistically, the other 5 wouldn’t. This had gone from serious to whatever is miles above that on the scale. If the cancer had spread to any organs in my body then they wouldn’t waste time and money on cutting the extra flesh away from my foot. A few rogue cancer cells in my foot would be the least of my worries.

That afternoon and evening was pretty tough. I called my Mum, brother, sister, Geoff and one of my closest friends, Hursty, to let them all know the situation. Telling those closest to you that you’ve got cancer is hard. It also doesn’t help that I’m a complete emotional wreck at the best of times. I blubbed all through my own wedding speech. I even cried when doing the best man’s speech at my brother’s wedding. There were a lot of deep breaths, long pauses and choked words on the phone that evening.

Although the next round of tests and operations were a week or so away, I decided that I needed to give myself the very best chance of dealing with what I had ahead of me and I spoke to Geoff to let him know that I felt I needed to be off work from then on. He was, as always, incredibly supportive and completely agreed that I needed to concentrate on my health and family. He assured me that I would have no contact from work at all and for the first time for a very long time, I was able to forget about work. I still met Geoff every couple of weeks to see how I was doing and he dropped me a few bits of work info to keep me in the loop. What I didn’t realise until I returned to work some time later was that he wasn’t letting me know about anything that was really going on. He was just giving me enough to make me feel like I was still involved whilst letting me have a clear mind to concentrate on myself. I really appreciated the clear head space.