читать дальшеJust months after my snooker star husband felt pains in his side he was dead
By LINDSAY HUNTER
During May 2004, I married my Prince Charming in a fairytale wedding in Jamaica. I'd met Paul Hunter seven years before when he was just an 18-year-old kid who played snooker.
Now he was dubbed the "Beckham of the Baize" because of his chiselled good looks and long, blond hair. At just 25, he'd won his third Masters title, a feat which, at the time, had been achieved by only two other players.
Paul and Lindsey at their wedding in 2004
As I wrote in my diary a short while later, "Paul and I are so in love, so happy, with no worries. We must be the luckiest people alive."
But towards the end of the year, Paul started to suffer from intermittent pains in his side. By the beginning of 2005, the pain was constant so he went to see his GP, who referred him to a consultant fearing appendicitis.
An abdominal scan revealed that Paul's appendix was fine, but there were six cysts in his abdomen. The consultant performed a laparoscopy, an outpatient procedure where the abdomen is pumped with gas and a biopsy taken.
It showed that the cysts were, in fact, tumours - and they were malignant. The treatment was to be chemotherapy: ongoing cycles of three sessions of three days each.
I remember coming home from the hospital with him the day they had broken the news.
Paul was as white as a sheet. That night, when we were alone, he asked me all the questions he hadn't asked in the hospital. It had all been too much to take in. He said: "Lindsey, do I have cancer?"
How do you answer that? I took his hands in mine, looked him in the eye and softly said: "Yes babes, you do." He looked like a frightened child. I rubbed his hands and held him as I whispered: "We'll get rid of it, you wait and see."
I remember him saying years earlier that he would get cancer. One of those adverts came on the telly - the ones where they say that one in three people will get cancer - and Paul said: "That's me. I'm going to be one of the one in three." It's strange to think of it now.
Two days later, Paul left for the China Open. It had been arranged months in advance and as he would be away just over a week he wanted to carry on as normal.
Amazingly, he reached the final eight, and when he got back at the beginning of April, we had our first meeting with the cancer specialist.
He wasn't sure what type of cancer Paul had. He suspected either a type of germ cell tumour - the kind which occur in testicular cancer, and which are relatively easy to treat with a success rate of over 90 per cent - or neuroendocrine tumours, a type of cancer with a much poorer survival prognosis of about one in three.
A subsequent scan ruled out a germ cell cancer, and the consultant broke the bad news that neuroendocrine tumours were the most probable diagnosis. He showed us the films from the laparoscopy.
It looked like there were 200 tumours, not six. They looked like Maltesers when they melt and stick together - huge masses of disgusting lumps inside the abdominal cavity.
Paul with Evie Rose in January 2006
Paul said it made him feel sick knowing what was inside his body. I went into autopilot, asking questions, taking notes.
But I was in a daze. Shocked. Tumour, cancer, malignant, chemotherapy - they are such awful words that it is hard to make the connection between them and what they will do to the person you love.
It was agreed that Paul would start his first course of chemotherapy after the 2005 World Snooker Championships, which began in Sheffield two weeks later. We both agreed he should continue competing for as long as he could, to take his mind off things.
In a fairy story, Paul would have won. Real life isn't like that though - he lost 10-8 in his first match. Everyone knew about the cancer and it was very emotional for Paul, leaving the hall to a standing ovation, wondering when he would be back.
By a strange twist of fate, after trying for seven months, I found out I was pregnant two days before the start of Paul's chemotherapy. Neither of us really believed it.
Our baby had chosen the most unlikely time to make its entrance into our world. We saw it as our lucky charm, the ray of light that would make the darkness bearable.
On April 27, Paul began his first course of chemo. He was to be treated with the drug combination BEP, Bleomycin/Etoposide/Cisplatin.
Alpha Feta Protein (AFP) blood tests are used to detect certain cancers. The higher the score, the bigger the tumour.
AFP levels should get back down to normal after chemotherapy but if they don't, that means the tumour hasn't completely gone.
In a healthy, non-cancerous person, the level is tiny, somewhere between zero and five for most. Paul's AFP tumour markers were 24,000 at this stage.
We were to become obsessed by these figures. They became the guide as to whether we should be celebrating or not.
When I saw him in bed that first day, wearing his cold cap, a kind of high-tech crash helmet that helps against hair loss, it hit me. This was real. This was actually happening.
He looked so vulnerable. He said that the first hour wearing the cap was horrible, that he felt his head was going to explode, but after that his scalp went numb.
Three days later, Paul came home. His face was so bloated it looked like it had been inflated with a pump. His legs felt dead and heavy and he'd put on a stone-and-a-half in three days with all the liquid that had been dripped into him.
That first night wasn't as straight forward as I'd hoped.
I thought he would just sleep, but he was up a night feeling sick and I couldn't drop off because I was so worried.
A few days later there was another set back. He had a tooth infection and had to be hospitalised so he could be put on a antibiotic drip. I'd just got hom from visiting him when he called me. "Can you come in, Linz?" he said, his voice cracking.
"Straight away?" I asked, trying to keep calm.
"Yeah. And bring the clippers - my hair's coming out in clumps."
Despite the hair loss, Paul was actually quite chipper by the time I got there, because he'd had some good news.
Not only was he able to come home because the intravenous antibiotics had done their job, but his tumour markers were down to 13,000.
The specialist told Paul that he would have been happy with those figures after the second cycle of chemo, never mind the first.
The first two cycles of chemo went well. His markers fell to 590 in the last week, and a CT scan showed that most of the tumours had disappeared. The specialist raised the possibility that it might be germ cell tumours after all.
The good luck continued. By July, the beginning of Paul's fourth chemo cycle, the markers were down to 34 - and had fallen to 18 by the end of it.
But the side-effects from the fourth session were awful.
Paul was too ill to attend his sister's wedding in Cyprus. That was one of our worst days so far.
While she was getting married thousands of miles away, Paul was sick 30 times in 36 hours. He had severe thrush in his throat from all the vomiting and emotionally was the lowest I'd ever seen him.
I could hear him in our bathroom trying to be sick yet again, but there was barely even any saliva left.
Then I heard the sobbing. "I'm so tired of this," he said. "But you're winning, babes, you're winning," I told him.
"Does this look like I'm winning?" he asked, between great gulps of tears. I didn't want to look. But I did.
He was a shadow of himself. He had no hair. He was grey. His eyes were sunken. He had lost weight but was bloated, too. His hands and fingers were numb. He was freezing but sweating.
One side of his face was swollen and the eye was bloodshot from the sickness. His veins were wrecked and I could see needle marks all over him.
I thought back to our wedding day, only a year before. Paul had looked so handsome and I'd been so proud. His hair was long and he looked golden and perfect with the sun shining behind him.
I couldn't help myself - I started crying. We sat there, together, in the bathroom and cried and cried. All the fear and relief and panic and hope came together in one burst of emotion.
At the end of the fourth cycle we went to Rhodes on holiday. It was like a second honeymoon, and in many ways we felt as though the baby was already there - Paul would rub my tummy all the time and talk to it every day.
We had an appointment with the specialist when we got back. We were in for bad news. The blood test taken just before we left showed Paul's markers were back up to 5,000.
More chemo was on the cards, though it would have to be a different type because Paul's body was now immune to the first combination of drugs.
He was devastated. He wept as if the world was coming to an end. I couldn't take it all in. I just hadn't seen this one coming.
Paul began the chemo in September. Drugs were to be administered every three weeks right through to January 2006. Every treatment seemed to get harder than the one before.
His feet got very cold this time round and he had to wear thermal socks all the time.
Also, he had no eyelashes left, so he often got tiny specks of dust in his eyes, which I had to help him remove. Of all the things you take for granted, you never think about eyelashes - until you don't have them.
The snooker season started up again, and on October 9 Paul bravely turned up to play at Preston Guild Hall. During that entire 2005/06 season he didn't miss a match, even when he was turning up at the table with no feeling in his fingertips, no hair, stomach pains, wearing his thermal socks and getting thinner by the day.
In November, halfway through the cycle, we had the all-important meeting to find out what his tumour markers were. The level was down - but only to 2,200.
When the doctor said that Paul should still continue the chemo through December, I winced. How much could one person take?
Physically and mentally, Paul was falling apart before my eyes. It was dreadful. I felt helpless.
The Christmas holiday brought some respite. On December 26, Evie Rose was born. In the middle of all the darkness and fear of death, all the pain and worry, we had created a new life.
For the first week after the birth, the three of us did everything together and barely left the house. If I could get that week back, I'd be the happiest person in the world.
But on January 3 there was more bad news from the specialist. The chemo had stopped working. It was keeping Paul's tumour marker level stable, but not reducing it. There was no point in doing another cycle.
"What will we do instead?" I asked, my throat feeling tight. The specialist seemed embarrassed that they had run out of options. "Let's keep an eye on things for the next few weeks," he said.
I was alarmed. I decided to research alternative treatments and lifestyle changes that might help. Steve Davis, the snooker player, told us that a relative of his diagnosed with cancer had used Essiac tea to help cure him.
Made from burdock root, sheep sorrel, turkey rhubarb root and slippery elm bark, the tea is a Native American remedy, rediscovered by a Canadian nurse 70 years ago.
I followed the recipe carefully - it took me ages to make - but unfortunately Paul couldn't stand the taste of it.
In April, the specialist suggested it was worth trying Paul on another course of chemo - this time a combination of oxaliplatin and capecitabine. But it caused horrendous vomiting.
Then on June 27, there was a real setback. Paul woke feeling dreadful. He was clutching his side and moaning: "Linz, it's back." The next blood test confirmed it: his markers were up to 40,000. A scan showed that his tumours had started to grow.
The doctors decided to treat him with yet another cycle of chemo, but I could see they were clutching at straws. Paul lost a lot of weight that summer and began to feel ill almost constantly.
At times, he could barely lift his head from the sofa.
His abdomen became so swollen he looked pregnant. He couldn't sleep for more than an hour at a time and he was so sick he had no appetite at all, even when I tried to tempt him with favourite foods like bacon sarnies.
On top of this, his skin was grey and painful, so often I couldn't even hug him. After that cycle, Paul's markers continued to shoot up. Our options had pretty much run out. In both September and October, Paul was admitted to hospital with dehydration caused by excessive vomiting.
When I visited him the second time, I got a huge shock because he was in a wheelchair. His eyes were sunken, his skin was pale and stretched over his face and somehow his teeth looked bigger in his skull.
"Lindsey, I'm dying," he said. "I know, darling, I know," I replied and he just stared at me.
It was the first time I hadn't said: "You'll be all right." I think he was relieved when I explained he was going to a hospice. He'd had enough. All he wanted was a good sleep.
Paul died at five to eight on the evening of October 9, five days before his 28th birthday, surrounded by his family. I could tell straightaway that he'd gone.
No one cried. There was this spooky calm. I carefully removed his diamond stud earring. I'd been wearing the other one of the pair since the day he went into hospital. I also put on the white dressing gown he'd been wearing for the past few months because it still smelled of him.
The funeral was held on October 19. The turnout was huge. I wrote on his funeral bouquet: "Paul, you are and always will be the only one. You have my heart."
I can't even begin to say how much I miss him, but the love we built together was so strong that it will live on for ever.
I want to thank him for Evie. For the life he left us with. For the friends he gave me. For the memories and for the things that are still happening because of him.
I'll hold his love in my heart for as long as I live and I wish I could say to him that even if I knew we had to go through it all again: "I'd still pick you, babes. I'd still pick you."
• Unbreakable by Lindsey Hunter is published by HarperCollins, priced £12.99. If you would like to make a donation to the Paul Hunter NET Patient Foundation, visit www.netpatientfoundation.com or call 0800 434 6476.