Part 14: ****Bolt Mode****
Another important thing that happened towards the end of treatment was finally getting to meet Dave Bolton, the man who inspired me to not let the fear beat me at the start of my journey. Unfortunately, this wasn’t under happy circumstances for himself because he had recently suffered 5 nocturnal seizures so he was leaving the hospital after an MRI.
When I met him, he said his shoulders were still injured from the event which had caused them to dislocate. He asked me how I was finding radiotherapy and by this time the fatigue was only just creeping in. He explained how radiotherapy was difficult for him as he suffered a break down at the time.
This made me realize how lucky I was to have his advice early on because he put me in a good place to avoid letting my anxiety cause me problems during the most challenging time of my life. I didn’t keep him too long as I could see he was eager to get home after the MRI process which can be a very boring wait at times. As he left I told him I had a good feeling he would have good results which is my way of giving positivity back to other patients.
I actually needed bags of it for the final week because I was starting to really get hit with the fatigue the radio-induced inflammation was causing in my brain. It also just happened that my final day of the last full week of sessions was on the same day that my friend Dave would be getting his MRI results. So I turned up to this session, feeling extremely tired and worried about him.
I struggled to get on the treatment table this time as I felt quite sick from the combination of these feelings. In the end, I powered through and got to take an unused cardboard sick bowl home with me as a free gift!
Luckily my Father was there this time so I could go straight home rather than to other places on the way back as Disco Bob would have to pick up and drop multiple patients off with the ambulance taxi service in just 1 day.
When we got home I sat on the bed just waiting for news of Dave’s results and I could see on Facebook, he had an army of followers doing the same, wishing him well.
He returned from that results day like the true hero he is, not just the fact that he had been in the police and made it to sergeant or that he had been an Olympic kickboxing champion… or that he had once been told he would never walk again after a motorbike accident… or that he had beaten his prognosis for the most aggressive brain cancer!
His results showed that there was no growth which was brilliant news because his previous scan showed his tumour was shrinking impressively. So the seizures he suffered the week previously would have most been likely that he was traveling to London to see the Six Nations Rugby game and had some alcohol to celebrate England victory when his brain was still recovering from the previous year.
This is why to so many and myself, it’s now called Bolt Mode when you are faced with a challenge considered impossible and you just simply take control and power through to success. At this stage I already knew he was helping dozens of others around the world with this survival mentality, so I felt blessed to have met him and been inspired by Bolt Mode.
This was a great way to end the last full week of treatment so I could really enjoy the weekend before the last 2 sessions.
I remember the penultimate session was one of the hardest because it dragged more than ever knowing that it would just be one more of this marathon and I wouldn’t have any more to deal with. I also hated it by now because I had researched so many along the way that I realized it was short term gain/long term misery in the case of radiotherapy.
Radiotherapy damages cancer cells by bombarding them with protons in a pro-oxidative tactic where free radicals can be activated which shortens one’s life anyway according to one of my many science heroes Aubrey De Gray who studies longevity medicine.
I was annoyed that instead of radiotherapy it was not Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy instead which does the same thing to inflammation with pro-oxidative stress but does not come with collateral damage from radiation causing progressive damage to healthy brain cells.
So I was almost at the end and I had found out that whatever it had done to delay the growth of the tumour , I had likely ruined any chance of having a decent old age if I was lucky enough to beat cancer another way. They only give you these things on the standard of care because they consider your chances of making that far to be very slim.
Again thanks to Bolt Mode, I was determined to fight whatever came my way so I didn’t let myself dwell on negative predictions of my future for long.
I still had to finish treatment and find out if my protocol had worked to get me into remission by using cannabis and staying on a strict ketogenic diet alongside the radiotherapy.
Before treatment ended my mother had to help me around the hospital because I was so fatigued. We spoke to the specialist nurse that day to give her a thank you card and a small gift to say thank you for her kind support. We asked her what they expected to see on the first scan after radiotherapy.
She explained that the radiotherapy wouldn’t be likely to shrink anything but that it would at best, stop it growing for a short period.
This was what I expected to hear from a standard of care point of view so it wasn’t that much of a scary thing to hear because I knew I had ignored science up my sleeve and my survivor friends online were pretty confident I could show shrinkage of the tumour which everything I was doing.
The very last day went very quickly which was good because I had started by having a slight argument with the radiotherapy staff explaining that I didn’t want the CT scan before it because I had already had plenty of CT scans done for targeting. I was told that because it was their protocol, I couldn’t have the treatment unless the CT scan was done so it was slightly frictional atmosphere leaving their department for the last time. The only thing that I would miss about the routine was Disco Bob's sense of humor on the way there and back.
Signing off that days Vlog, it felt wonderful to show everyone a full sheet of ticks on the radiotherapy count sheet my fiancée made me at the start. I now had a 6-week wait to recover from the treatments acute fatigue effects before I had to go for the post-treatment MRI.
During the first week recovering I was starting to learn more about the community behind medical cannabis in the UK where every major city and town has its own cannabis community Facebook page to connect people with information on cannabis and undo the lies told about it by successive governments.
I joined my local one and found out that the BBC was looking for people to participate in a medical cannabis documentary. I felt that given my previous ignorance of Cannabis and how well it helped me through radiotherapy, reducing anxiety, inflammation which saved me from needing steroids, I should put myself forward to show what a positive thing it had been for me and changed my attitude towards this wonderful plant.
To Be Continued…