adminSo everything was planned as normal for our March trip to Benidorm we were staying for the first 3 nights at Mayal Con Pisina Appartments and the rest of the holiday at Barcelo Beach again this time we booked a sea view and to be fair I think we got the best room in the hotel, room 603. An added bonus was our son and partner were coming over for 3 nights, with his partner taking in the weekend.
So everything was going almost to plan there will be updates as I get around to them but Saturday evening we went for early cocktails at Nova and I just felt tired. We came out of Nova at about 7pm, and I said to my wife I’m tired and needed sleep, which isn’t like me and this was the start of it. I went to bed and slept in between coughing. Sunday, I could not face anything and we made our way to the pharmacy in the hope of buying antibiotics, which you cannot do in Spain anymore. We had medical insurance so we went to the clinic, but not being used to being ill I just made the decision to man it out, so I spent the rest of the holiday in bed drinking water and eating the occasional bit of melon.
26th, we were flying back and I have never looked forward to returning to the UK. Whilst I woke up feeling OK the short walk to the taxi took it out of me and I sat in Alicante Airport with 2 coats on fastened up to the neck. I made a call to my doctors and got an appointment for that day. Doctor said I have a number of viruses Gastroenteritis, a chest infection, a throat infection and a fever, pretty much a full house and I got my antibiotics and something to stop me felling sick so that I could eat, I had not eaten for 4 days by this point. Anyway my cough was horrendous to the point was was trying to sleep in a reclining chair as I could not lie down, a week later and I was back at the doctors, now I never go to the doctors, I’m never i’ll so when I call up they get me in straight away. I literally said to the doctor something is killing me, she took my observations and basically said I’m sending you to hospital there is something wrong with you but I have no idea what.
So I arrive at hospital and know it’s going to be long, eventually I’m seen by a doctor who basically thinks there’s nothing wrong with me other than a bad cough, but he organises some blood tests which can messsed up, I throw a tantrum and the saviour of the day Sister Julie-Ann steps in and calms me down and gets me sorted. Bloods come back and the doctors now thinks there is something very seriously wrong with me and organises a CT scan of my chest.
Now the results come back and I know it’s bad as I get taken into a separate rooms and they lay out a number of chairs, Ok you have pneumonia, Acute PE (blood clots on my lungs) but there is a big BUT whilst both are life threatening they are the leaste of my problems. They have found a growth in my bowel and lesions on my liver but I need a further CT to see the full extent which means staying in hospital. I took anther 24 hours to get some answers which is a long time when they’ve told you have cancer and I had a niece who had been diagnosed with liver cancer and and die within a month.
The good news was no liver cancer and the bowel tumour/s are only in my Transverse Colon so waiting for further test to get full diagnosis and treatment plan. So Benidorm did quite kill me and to be honest it probally saved my life as apparently I could have had this years and never know.
So updates have been a little delayed but hopefully there will be some coming through soon but no Benidorm for me maybe for the whole of 2025 but I will be back.
Benidorm Saved My Life
August 2025 update: Well the news was I actually had early stage bowel cancer which meant an operation to remove three quarters of my bowel which you can live without, but I do have a rather nice 8 inch scar vertically down my abdomen, which my wife says I should be proud of because i beat cancer. Truth is I was lucky and becoming ill in Benidorm meant they accidentally found the tumor, it was early stage and they removed it and I have to say NHS is fantastic when i asked ‘how long is the waiting’ the consultant replied ‘ there is no waiting’ he basically had to look at his dairy and give me a date which was two weeks from diagnosis. Final bit of news is I am clear of cancer but have to have check ups for the next five years.
One thing I really need to get off my chest is; when I initially released this post I had people commenting that they did not believe it, was it AI? The title was a bit clickbait but other than putting photos of my scar on how (anybody want’s to see it I can post it, but its not pretty) do you reply to these people, I’m not sure how they get up in the morning if they can tell the difference between AI/spam and real life.
