SO FAR in my column I have told the story of how it felt to be diagnosed with kidney cancer, and of our campaign, which helped change Nice’s decision on Sunitinib.

Now I’m going to try to tell you, over the coming weeks, about what it’s like to live with cancer on a daily basis.

Since my diagnosis, two years ago, I have been fortunate enough to have met many brave and caring people, many of whom are on the same journey.

I’m a great believer in the benefits to be gained from talking problems through, rather than bottling things up, and cancer is no exception.

The more we talk about cancer, the better it will be understood. This wasn’t always the case, as many of you will remember it being referred to, only a few years ago, as “The C Word”.

Looking back, I think all the effort involved in campaigning did much to take my mind off my own illness and gave me something positive on which to focus.

I still have to pinch myself from time to time when I think of what has been achieved.

The fight was especially tough here in Oxfordshire, as we were also up against a postcode lottery, due to the policy of our primary care trust before Nice’s decision.

My heart goes out to the families of the many brave patients who have since died having been denied the chance of being treated with this drug.

We were constantly being told by both Nice and the NHS, that Sunitinib would only give an extra few months of life, and yet I know of patients who have been taking it for three years. So I’m glad we stuck to our guns.

Turning to my own case, my life is now dominated by the never-ending trips to hospitals. I often say to my wife that we seem to be tied to the Churchill by an umbilical cord, what with blood tests, CT scans and consultant appointments.

We seem to have lost our independence and freedom, as we are now an integral part of the NHS.

We seem to have adjusted our routines, by default, around the quarterly scans.

While we know we are fortunate to have free access to modern monitoring methods, the process is daunting.

Like others, I begin to feel the build-up to the scan a week or so beforehand, and have known to be a bit short-tempered (to say the least) and preoccupied around this time. I am just so lucky to have such a supportive wife and family with me at these testing times.

The hardest part of this process is waiting to learn the outcome, and fearing the worst. I often think just how hard it must be for our clinicians to give bad news to patients and their loved ones. It must be very difficult.

Although I have to say we are very fortunate in having many first class, caring and sympathetic clinicians and nurses here in Oxford, and they do their best to put us at ease.

That reminds me – my next scan is due in a day or so.