After discovering he had cancer of the oesophagus in 1998, keen marathon-runner Clive Alexander had an oesophago-gastrectomy. Six months after his operation, he was able to go running again.
"I was 63 when I first noticed symptoms. We had friends round for dinner and I swallowed a lump of bread and choked. After that, whenever I ate bread or meat, I noticed it was really hard to get down. My GP gave me a large bottle of Gaviscon medicine for indigestion and wrote a referral for me to see a specialist.
"I saw the consultant in September 1998. He gave me an endoscopy and, when the results came back, told me I had oesophageal cancer. You don’t want to think the worst in these kinds of situations, but invariably you do. When I heard, I just wanted to know what could be done about it.
"I had to have two more endoscopies and I also had an ultrasound on my liver and a CT scan. The cancer had spread to my stomach, but hadn’t gone further so, in a way, I was lucky. I was referred for surgery and while I waited, I carried on living as normal a life as possible. I continued working (I was a maintenance engineer which is a very physical job involving lots of lifting) right up to my operation and six weeks before the op, I ran a half-marathon.
"In December, I had an oesophago-gastrectomy, an operation where the bottom of the oesophagus and half the stomach are removed. The operation took eight-and-a-half -hours and the recovery period was meant to be two to three weeks, but because I was quite fit before surgery, I was allowed home after 13 days.
"While I was in hospital, I was fed semi-solid food through a tube, which went straight into the small bowel. The tube was left in when I went home – just in case – and I had to clean it each day, which wasn’t that nice a job.
"I do eat more normally now, but I still have to be careful. Because my stomach is half the size it used to be, I can’t eat large quantities. Also, the valve at the top of the stomach is no longer there, which means that if I eat too much, I don't feel good. I feel very leaden and sleepy and get bad indigestion. I can go out for meals, but whereas I would once have had three courses with no problem, now I can only manage two.
"You learn to cope. I eat small meals, more often. I eat when I’m hungry rather than having three meals a day and I don’t like to eat after 5.30pm or 6pm in the evening. If I go out for a meal, I have to stay up until midnight so that my food has had a chance to digest. I also have to sleep at a 45-degree angle; otherwise, you can wake up in the night feeling as if you’re choking.
"It’s now eight years since I was diagnosed. I went back to work four months after the operation (although I’m retired now), and I started running again six months after the operation – and I'm still running. I was lucky because I was fit, but having something else to focus on also helped.”
