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Update October 2016

27 Oct

neil-2016

It’s been a while again since my last blog page and it’s now nearly 3 years since the my initial operation in November 2013 and the start of my ongoing treatment. It’s also been a busy year in the Jeremy household for which I will be writing about in our Christmas communications. 

But for now I just want to update you all on the outcome of my latest hospital trips. At the beginning of October I had my annual MRI scan, which was a 2 hours session that scanned my whole body. So after waiting for nearly a month to find the results, Sue and myself attended an appointment at the new cancer centre at Guys hospital yesterday 26 October, which I must say is a very nice new building, although yesterday they was having a computer system nightmare.

I wasn’t actually looking forward to this appointment getting the results from the scan, but we met with the oncology consultant Dr Mary Lei. Mary then told us that the whole team had reviewed the scans and that there had been no changes and everything had remained stable and they was all pleased with the current situation and no further action was currently needed. This as you can imagine was a massive relief to both Sue and myself.

I now only need to have 1x MRI scan a year and less appointments. but I still have another appointment next week with the head and neck surgeon Mr Rubert Obholzer, but this again should be a fairly routine appointment.

So we can again relax and enjoy life and make plans for next year!

Thanks you all again for your ongoing love, support and prayers. I do believe that Jesus and father God have been watching over me and it’s a miracle that I have pulled thought all this treatment and which has been against the all odds and by the grace of God I can live another day. Thank you God.

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Update August 2015

13 Aug

IMG_1361 Neil

IMG_1041 croppedBlog Update 13 August 2015

It’s now nearly 6 weeks since my last small operation, which I didn’t really explain about much in my last blog post. So I’ll just briefly explain. In Feburary’s operation which was to attached an titanium abutment into my skull to create a fixing point on my head for a BAHA (bone attached hearing aid) hearing aid. I also had an injection into my left vocal cord to hopefully improve the volume of my voice, as my voice has been pretty quiet since all my operations and treatments last year, as a nerve was cut in one of the operations meaning I have lost the use of a number of neck and throat muscles which controlled my voice and my swallowing, which in turn means only one of my two vocal cords now moves, leaving a gap, which in turn didn’t give me enough breath to talk very loudly at all.

The February operation went a long way to improving my voice, but the speech therapist felt it could be improved further, so this is what the last operation was about and I can say that after I had rested my voice for 48 hours, there was an improvement again. I’m still not back to a normal level of volume, but this now is as good as it gets and I’m happy as I now have enough breath to even sing, a bit, but it’s not quite the angelic tones I was able to output to years ago, but far better than it’s been.

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Life is now at a new normal and as good as it gets. Work has been a bit quiet in July and we’ve had a 2 week family holiday at the end of July and first week of August. Our first week was our 11th year camping at New Wine christian summer conference at the Royal Bath and West Showground at Shepton Mallet, Somerset, camping with 12,000 other people and churches. The weather wasn’t great with heavy rain meaning we started off the week pretty wet! But the weather didn’t spoil our week and we had great fun with lots of old and new friends. Our 3 kids spent the week working in on the youth teams looking after groups on 16-18 7-8 years olds. So although they had a busy week they loved every minute of it.

IMG_1400 LR IMG_1419 Cottage LR

Our second week was far more luxurious one, as we drove on to St Brides, Pembrokeshire in south Wales to stay with another family the Heaths, in a very nice cottage. Again the weather was mixed but that didn’t stop us having a great week.

Now we’re backing and getting use to normal life again. The kids are off again next week to Soul Survivor. Dan then has a further 2 holidays before his back down to Southampton at the end of September for his second year at uni.

Sue and the girls return to school at the start of September and work wise, I am then booked from the beginning of September for a potentially extended contract in a well know global brands in-house design apartment. Which I’m looking forward to.

That’s our news for now and hopefully we looking forward to a fairly non-eventful autumn. Thanks again for all your love, prayers and support.

Neil

Operation Update July 2015

13 Aug

Hi guys. this is not a new blog posting, it’s just my blog site has been down and out of action for a couple of weeks. But it’s has now been restored from my last back up in May, which didn’t have this last post from July on it, so it’s all old News, not new News, is just I’ve re-published this last blog post again to keep the blog site up to date. I will give you all the latest update soon.

Thanks Neil
August 2015

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Just to give you all a quick up date on todays events.

I arrived at Guys Hospital at London Bridge at 9am, but didn’t get into theatre till 1.30pm, so a long wait! But was only in Theatre about 30 mins and I was back on the ward by 3.30pm.

Everything went well and feeling good, but I’m now of a forced & strict NO TALKING routine for the next 48 hours. So not allow to speak, much to my families relief. I’m not really going to know how successfully this current operation has been until Sunday onwards. So watch this space to hear my voice!

My friend Pete Doorey came up to the ward just as I arrived on it and stayed till there till they let me home at 7.30pm. Fortunately London bridge station is only 5 mins walk from the ward and the fast train was only 18 minutes to Orpington and my lovely wife then picked us up from the station.

So I’m now home and feeling pretty good and have now adopted a new way of communicating with everyone! My mac has the ability to convert type into speech, so I type what I want to say and the computer speaks it out loud! This is fun and I can speak in many different voices and accents. Sue is already sick on my new voice!!! But I’m enjoying my new computer voice as it’s far better than my pre op voice, as I’ve been so use to have such a quiet and weak voice and I’m hoping, come Sunday the strength and volume of my voice will be improved! Watch this space as I might even record a message with my new voice in a blog to everyone!

Thanks again for your prayers and support today!

Update May 2015

6 May

Blog update 6 May 2015

Another long over due update and lots has happen since February’s operations. One to improve the volume of my voice and the other to attached an titanium abutment into my skull to create a fixing point on my head for a BAHA (bone attached hearing aid) hearing aid. As I said in my previous post.

All went well on the day and I woke up feeling pretty good and not feeling too tired or sleepy from the anaesthetic, but I was talking a lot louder straightaway. But as I found out later, I should have been resting my voice for a couple of days after the operation. But no medical staff had told be this. A speech therapist should have come a see me whilst I was in hospital, but it took another 4 weeks for this to happen. After emailing my consultant after 4 weeks one morning not speaking to anyone about it. I actually got an appointment with the principle speech therapist on the same day. She was great and then told me that I should have rested my voice for a couple of days after the operation. Hindsight is a great thing! I then had 4 speech therapy session over 4 weeks with her which did really help me to understand how I could help my voice through different exercises. After the 4 sessions it was then decided that although the injection had improved my voice, their was still a gap in my throat between my good vocal cord on the right and the one that had stopped working on my left, which in reality is only about 1mm gap, but I have been told that I could still have another injection to push out the non working vocal cord to meet the good vocal cord better then hopefully I would get another increase in volume, which I definitely noticed after the first operation.

The BAHA abutment did take a few weeks for the settle down and for the skins around it to start to heal which did mean weekly visited to see the nurse, but after 5 weeks it was looking good. I was then booked in to get the actual BAHA hearing aid, which did take another 6 weeks for the appointment, but those finally happened on 27 April. So after getting my bonic ear clip on last week it’s been great and I have now got back my full hearing. The sound isn’t quite the same as my other ear, but with both ears working together I get a great surround sound, which also gives me back the ability to hear which direction sound is coming for. It has also help me in term of when I am anywhere where there is a lot of background noise and I have found even at parties I can hear well. So another thing to tick off as sorted.

At the beginning of April I had another one of my regular MRI scans to check on my neck and to see what’s going on in there and today I had an appointment with Mr Rubert Obholzer my consultant to review the scan and catch up on my progress. So Sue had the morning off school to come to Guys hospital with me. We was both feeling a bit nervous, as we had been told last summer there is still a very small trace of the tumour in my neck, but from August to December if anything it had reduced in size. So in the end it was a very positive appointment. Mr Obholzer explained a bit more about the tumour, that many people who had my sort of tumour often had small traces left, but often these are a very different sort of tissue and other people have lived with this sort of thing for 20 years with no problems. He has also booked me in to have another top up injection which will again be a general anaesthetic, as he believes this will again improve the volume of my voice, this should hopefully happen in the next 6 weeks and should only be a quick 30 minute operation. So with not great expectations for the appointment, we came away very happy.

As for everything else, eating is still slow, but improving slightly and I’ve halved the amount of shakes I’m still taking and generally my health is good and life is fairly normal. Work wise, I was a bit quiet in February, but this did pick up from March and I’ve been very busy since and I’ve had some great projects working on a Kronebourg beer and bottle packaging and an Orangina juice bottle and can packaging project for one agency for 5 weeks, which have been great projects to work on.

I must sign off now, but I once again want to thank all my family and friends for all your prayers and support as we as a family have got through this last 18 months together and we also believe that God has been watching over us and looking after us, every step of our journey. Thank you Jesus.

Operation update 5 Feb 2015

5 Feb

Just to give you all a brief operation update. Was it at 7 this morning and remember being in the theatre at 9.30am, next thing it was 12.30pm and I was fully awake in recovering and the best thing was, I was talking straightaway in sentences without having to breathe every 2-3 word. Happy I’m very very happy. They could stop me talking As I had a years talking to catch up on.

I was back up on the ward by 1.30 and feeling great, not even drowsy or in much discomfort. Throats a bit sore but only like a mild  sore throat. But who’s throat wouldn’t be sore if you had cameras and other stuff stuffed down your noise and throat.

My baha bone anchor also went well but wouldn’t get the benefits of this for another 4-6 week until the scar has healed.

But again overall very very happy. Thanks again for your prayers and support.