‘I may have less than a year to live’

‘Yesterday I found out I will die soon,’ he wrote in a blunt introduction to a heart-breaking and thought-provoking blog.

His Southampton oncologist had told him that he had a life expectancy of six to 12 months.

Mr Burgess has been keeping an online ‘chemo diary’ since November last year when he started several months’ treatment to deal with ‘five nasties that have grown around my trachea, oesophagus and lungs’.

He had previously had chemotherapy for testicular cancer in 1999 and that appeared to have worked, but in 2015 and 2016 he had some cancerous growths surgically removed from his lungs.

In late 2019 the five tumours appeared, despite a CT scan at the beginning of the year being clear.

There followed a session of ‘salvage chemotherapy’ which had shrunk the tumours, but in Mr Burgess’ latest blog he said they had come back to life: ‘But there are now more, and the expectation is they will continue to do their thing, possibly making their way to my liver, my brain and elsewhere in my body.

‘They’re inoperable. There isn’t a treatment left to get rid of them.’

He was told that there is a chemotherapy treatment that could add a few weeks, maybe months, to his life, with the trade-off being the loss of quality of life due to the side effects of the drugs but

was undecided about doing it.

His blog continued in a thoughtful mode: ‘Hearing you’re going to die is odd,’ he wrote, adding that it was ‘a strange, other worldly experience, to think there may only be one more birthday, one more Christmas, one more wedding anniversary’.

He wrote his latest blog when his mind was racing and filled with random questions: ‘Should I plan my funeral now? Do I want to be buried or cremated? What will dying feel like? How can I not exist any more?’

And then there was the difficulty of telling relatives, friends and his boss the news: ‘Each call is utterly exhausting.’

His husband told his own family members and colleagues: ‘He shouldn’t have to do that. We’re both relatively young. We should be thinking about holidays and home improvements and all the things we want to do in life, together.’

His goal was to go with his husband on a cruise they had planned before the pandemic: ‘I hope, if this world reopens in time, we get our chance to do that.

‘Right now I am broken,’ he concluded. ‘But, with the love of my friends, my family, and most of all my husband, I’ll get it together with a view to living my best life.’

The full blog may be read at bit.ly/3mNrqrM. [https://garyschemodiary.wordpress.com/2020/11/04/life-and-death/]

n Mr Burgess has worked for BBC Guernsey and currently works for ITV Channel in Jersey. He has written for the Guernsey Press and Jersey Evening Post and helped host the Guernsey Press Pride of Guernsey ceremony last month.