So here’s the plan. We finished the first stage of the walk, then I got cancer. Not the end we wanted, but there you go. Since then we’ve returned to the UK and got back on with our lives, me with monthly blood tests, Dave with a quest for financial security that has now led him to a hospital in Croydon (Dave, hurry up with that promised Journal entry mate, the people want to know what you’re having pumped into you!). The walk alternately seems a long time ago and as-if-it-was-just-yesterday to me, but after watching Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman’s Long Way Round DVD this week I realised I cannot wait to get back out there and finish our ridiculous trek off.

Therefore some planning needs to be done. I am basically now on what is called a surveillance program for my cancer situation, which means I have to have monthly blood tests and chest x-rays, and quarterly CT scans in order to check whether the little bugger has come back. So far my blood tests have showed normal tumour marker levels and my one CT scan has come back clear. Sighs of relief all round then, but things don’t get any easier. I need to keep having these tests for the next few years (although the CT scans will become quarterly and then six monthly). The big questions is: where does this leave the walk?

Well, I feel good. Very good. Physically I”m fit as a fiddle, as Master Ace once said, and very much enjoying this winter break as it is giving me time to read up on my history of the US and prepare articles, presentations and eventually a book proposal for an as yet undiscovered brave publisher. I am therefore proposing to carry on as normal, and get the walk back online this year. It’s a gamble, but when the alternative is to sit around and wait for a possible recurrence (according to my doc I am rocking about a 40% chance of recurrence, not so good but then it means a 60% chance of nothing coming back (duh)), I think I know which side I want my bread buttered on. We must get back out there, and complete what we set out to do.

So, as I said, here’s the plan. I need to carry on with these checkups. If something recurs while I am in the UK it’s simple – chemo for me (and, sadly, if it recurs in the US, back home I come. But whaddya gonna do?). But if I can get through the February, March and April tests then things start looking better, and I’ll get on a plane come May 1st. What about the tests, I hear you chorus. Well, this is the thing. I am proposing to take my surveillance regime abroad, take it on tour, get it out there and in the clean fresh air of Kansas, the Rockies and further west. How to do this? Careful liaison with my UK and US doctors for a start. However, the extra hurdle is that the good old US of A has a kinda not-free-at-the-point-of-delivery health service, as we all know (I certainly do, seeing as I was approached for my insurance details while lying half-clothed on a gurney in the GWU emergency room), and I’m going to need some help with getting my medical costs covered.

What sort of help, and who is with me? I need at most six blood tests and x-rays paid for, and likely 2 CT scans. I can get these at hospitals on the way. How much does this cost? Frightening amounts for the scans no doubt. But I’m gonna try to do this. I cannot sit around being the Man Who Walked Halfway Across America. That’s just not a good pub story, and I live for pub stories. First of all I am writing this here to see if anyone reading it has any advice for me on where I might get financial help from to do this thing, or any advice at all on how to proceed. I have already identified Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation as a potential partner, an organisiation that I think a partnership with would be ideal, completely perfect (Lance is like the patron saint of all TC people). I’m approaching the Foundation to see if they can help. I have to be broad though, so if anyone has any ideas, or  thousands of dollars lying around, please get back to me via the email at the bottom of the page or the Guestbook.

So now I have something to write about – my quest for cash/help. More to come as soon as I know it…

Dave, now speak to your people. You’re lying around in bed all day getting paid for it, right?

Stuart                                Have a comment? Please sign the guestbook