Hello Darkness My Old Friend: More Cancer Diaries Pt 1

Those of you with good memories might remember that I wrote a series of blogs a few years back entitled ‘The Cancer diaries’ where I detailed my experiences of fighting stage three bowel cancer. What’s that? No you don’t remember it? Ah well you missed a treat ‘cos it was proper award winning stuff…fuck off it was!

Anyway, ‘cos it was that good I thought I’d write a sequel – something witty and inventive like ‘More Cancer Diaries!’ what’s that? Why would I write more about living with and fighting cancer when I’ve already beaten it and got the all-clear three years ago?

Good question and, sadly, I think we all know where I’m going with this don’t we…

I had my third year of surveillance scanning in June ’25 which showed that my bowel was tip top but the lesion on my left kidney that had been mentioned briefly last year at my second surveillance scan had grown another centimetre and was now 3cm. As a result I was summoned to the urology diagnostic centre at Malton Community Hospital and on 22^nd July 2025 was diagnosed with Kidney cancer. Neither of the cancers are connected and I appear to have just been really, really fucking unlucky!

The good news is that we've caught it early and as the tumour/lesion is small(ish) I can go straight into hospital and have my offending kidney sliced up to remove it without all of the radiotherapy and chemo I ‘enjoyed’ last time round.

The bad news is that I’ll be writing these blogs again and you’ll all have to pretend to like them again 😉

Amusingly (or not!)  I’d finally got confident enough that I was in the clear to book my celebratory ‘I beat bowel cancer’ tattoo complete with specifically coloured blue ribbon and will be getting that almost two weeks to the day that I was diagnosed with my new one. Hey ho…

As you know I tend to face this shit head on and try to keep myself in a positive frame of mind so I’ll leave you with this – If I hadn’t had bowel cancer I wouldn’t now be under surveillance with regular CT scans…and then my kidney lesion wouldn’t have been spotted and the first we’d have known about it would have been when I’d started pissing blood in about five years time when it was too late. So I’ve been lucky really if you look at it that way.

Right then, it’s time to go. The big-hooded fucker with the scythe’s beckoning me onto the floor again…so fists up, chin down and let’s do this fucking dance once more.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Rivs

#sometimesdownneverout