A READING father-of-three who’s worked with the likes of George Michael, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, has described how he thought he was going to die after he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.
Sharing his story for Cancer Research UK during Oesophageal Cancer Awareness Month (February), John Saunderson, 64, believes he wouldn’t be here today to see his grandchildren grow up if he hadn’t told his GP about his symptoms soon after they appeared.
From Cancer Research UK
Sharing his story for Cancer Research UK during Oesophageal Cancer Awareness Month (February), John Saunderson, 64, believes he wouldn’t be here today to see his grandchildren grow up if he hadn’t told his GP about his symptoms soon after they appeared.
From Cancer Research UK
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:22 It all started for me when I was having difficulty swallowing and I could feel
00:25 a sort of pain when I was swallowing. My wife was getting concerned so we went to
00:29 the doctors and they said look we'll put you on reflux pills. They did for a
00:32 couple of weeks, that didn't work. So my wife insisted that I go and say look we
00:36 need a camera down there there's something not right. So I went for the
00:39 endoscopy, everything was like going swimmingly. I didn't have the sedation
00:45 because I was seeing a band that night and yeah they found a cancer down there
00:50 straight away and 99% said we think you've got that, we're pretty sure you've
00:54 got that.
00:56 When you get the disease I was sitting there thinking oh my god I'm not gonna
01:00 see any of my grandchildren. I'm not gonna see my daughter get married.
01:05 But I did and we've got four grandchildren, three grandchildren, one on the way
01:15 and I'm just incredibly grateful for that. Sorry.
01:21 [Music]
01:35 I decided to do a dry genuine, if anybody knows me they know that that's quite
01:40 difficult for me. But I did it and I raised about £7,000. The second
01:45 time I did it, money's a bit more tight now so we only got a couple of
01:49 grand but we're doing another kind of fundraiser on a big networking night I
01:53 do and you know we're gonna put banners up for Cancer Research UK and have
01:58 people collecting money. I just think the work that you do is so incredibly
02:02 incredibly important. We can beat this and that's why I will continue to
02:06 support Cancer Research UK as much as I can.
02:11 [Music]
02:16 You know your own body, you know if something's not right, you know the
02:20 doctor doesn't feel what you feel and I would encourage anybody
02:24 the first time you get any symptoms like that just go to the doctors. I
02:28 could have been on those reflux pills for weeks and weeks and weeks and I
02:31 might not be here right now but you need to know your own body and I would
02:35 just insist on getting things done and you know I'm now mentoring 15 people who
02:40 have done exactly the same as I did. They got it nice and early, most of them did
02:43 and you know the outcome is good.
02:48 [Music]
02:50 (whooshing)
02:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]