I never felt this would kill me

MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE:IT WAS October 2003 and I was at a reception at Liberty Hall for my first novel, Big Fat Love. I did a 50-minute stand-up routine about the characters in the book.

Afterwards my wife Sheila said: “There was a hoarseness in your voice. I’ve never heard that timbre in your voice before.”

I was a typical man and I put off getting it checked but five months later, the hoarseness hadn’t gone away. I went to our family doctor and he immediately referred me to St James’s for a biopsy.

When I went to get the results, it was exactly how I would have directed the scene. Before the doctor even said anything, I knew something was wrong. There was no small talk. He said the biopsy showed there was a malignant tumour. They avoid the word cancer like the plague. It was throat cancer. I was referred to St Luke’s Hospital.

I had given up cigarettes on April 12th, 1986. I remember the date because I was in LA for three months, directing a play. It was the start of the whole anti-smoking thing. I got pissed off when my agent told me not to smoke in her house, so I decided not to smoke on the plane on the way home and from then, I just stopped.

I had been smoking 20 or 30 a day. My routine was a coffee, cigarettes, an ashtray and a blank pad.

My doctor’s name was Dr Hollywood. He looked at my chart and said: “If you hadn’t given up smoking 20 years ago, I’d be telling you a different story. I’d be telling you to go home and make your will.”

I made contact with someone I knew who had mouth cancer. I wanted to talk through with him what would happen to me, but in three months he was dead. I contacted another person who had the disease and they were dead within six months.

I always embrace new experiences, though it sounds strange in this case. I’m always intrigued by whatever is happening to me. I never felt this would kill me, I don’t know how I felt that. My children were really upset, but I kept saying, “I’ll be grand”.

For the radiotherapy, you have to wear a mask over your head, neck and shoulders. It’s to pin you down so that the laser zaps you in exactly the same spot every time. There was a reflective surface above where I used to lie and I remember thinking, “I look like a Palestinian terrorist”.

I had radiotherapy 25 times over five weeks. I didn’t feel anything during the treatment, but later on, the inside of your throat gets more and more sore to the point of not being able to eat. You’re just having nutrition drinks.

The more the treatment went on, the more I needed Sheila. I started off driving to the appointments, but after a while she’d need to go with me. After treatment, you get radiation sickness. You’re exhausted all the time and you can’t talk, so you’re using a pen and pad to communicate.

Six weeks after it finished, I went for “the big check-up” to see if they’d zapped it.

They put a tiny camera up my nose and down my throat. The doctor was excited saying, “Look, look you can see the inside of your larynx”, as though as a film-maker I’d really want to see a Jacques Cousteau-like movie of the inside of my nose – “Oh, it’s fantastic to see the inside of my larynx”. I just wanted them to get it out of my nose.

The first signs were great. They said the chances of survival were 70 per cent as I’d given up smoking. I kept thinking of the headline: “Hollywood Saves Peter Sheridan!”

When I think I could have carried on for five years and not got myself checked – early detection is key.

My chances got better and better every year. I never thought cancer would kill me. I never felt in danger of dying from it.

Sheila and I went to Spain a few days after I got the all-clear in 2004. I went for a swim in the sea – I just wanted to wash everything away. But the tide pulled me out. I had no energy to swim back. I was fearful I was going to die.

I remember thinking to myself about Sheila. “After all this woman has been through, she needs a holiday. And now she’s going to have to bring me home in a box. She’ll kill me!” Thankfully, a surfer saw me and rescued me.

I have a yearly check-up now every September and I know it will be okay. My only fear is that the cancer might be lurking somewhere else. But I’m not a fearful person; I don’t live in a fearful place.

Finding out I had cancer forced us to look at our mortality. You have to talk about it in your marriage; you’re forced to confront it.

It changed me fundamentally as a person. I’m not as ambitious as I was before. I’m not chasing success like I was before. It’s more a question of, “Will this project take me away from my grandchildren for a long time?”

I know it’s a cliche, but you have to be positive. It’s the only way to be. I’ve worked the 12 steps for 20 years, so I know we only have today. It’s the disease of modern living I suppose, to live in the past or live in the future.

You have to live your life for today and make it the best possible day.

MOUTH, HEAD AND NECK CANCER: WHAT SYMPTOMS TO LOOK OUT FOR

Mouth, head and neck cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, with more than 500,000 cases a year.

Three Irish people die from these cancers every week – more than from skin melanoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma or cervical cancer.

The term “mouth cancer” can refer to cancers affecting the lips, gums, cheeks, tongue, palate, tonsil, throat, salivary glands, nose and the larynx.

Symptoms include white or red patches inside the mouth, a lump in the mouth or neck, thickening or hardening of the cheek or tongue, a persistent sore throat and hoarseness, persistent nose bleeds and a stuffy nose, and unexplained loose teeth.

Many mouth cancers can be detected at an early stage by a simple, screening examination, an important part of a routine dental check-up.

Early diagnosis and treatment can result in five-year survival rates of more than 80 per cent, versus rates of 10-35 per cent for advanced cancer.

As part of Mouth, Head and Neck Cancer Ireland’s awareness day on September 29th, people are invited to visit the Dublin Dental Hospital on Lincoln Place, or Cork Dental Hospital at Cork University Hospital, for a free mouth examination.

In conversation with

Joanne Hunt