In August 2025, Tony had an indication that something wasn't quite right about his health. He had noticed some changes in his bowel habits but had no idea what the problem was.
Tony went to his doctor who conducted various tests on cancer and everything came back fine. In November, Tony went out with some friends for the weekend. When he came home, his wife noticed that he had developed jaundice.
On Monday morning, she said, "You're ringing the doctors now." Tony rang the doctors at 8am and by 10am, he was sitting in front of a GP. The GP did a test for half an hour and then said to Tony, "You're going to hospital."
Tony was taken to his local hospital, and was there for five days where they conducted various tests and different scans. They suspected pancreatic cancer, but couldn't say for definite, but in any case the jaundice was under control.
They put in a stent into the pancreas to try and bypass the bile and get it back where it should have gone, into the duodenum, which worked for a while and over Christmas.
But at the start of 2026, Tony started developing jaundice again. He was taken back to hospital for another three weeks while they tried to get the whole thing under control. During that time, they did more tests and in February they diagnosed it was pancreatic cancer.
The hospital arranged for Tony to go to King's to see Pancreatic Surgeon Mr Mohamed Elmasry. Tony met Mr Elmasry, who asked him about surgery, saying to Tony, "If we can get you in, are you prepared to take to have the operation?" Tony immediately said, "Absolutely, there is no question I'll have the operation."
Two weeks later, Tony was at King’s for three weeks while he recovered, saying he received "the best of treatments."
Tony's chemotherapy comes to an end at the end of October 2026.
He said: "I can't fault Mr Elmasry and his team, they did an amazing job. It's just brilliant what they did. And the nursing team was first rate, they were just brilliant. They were very caring and very attentive. You wonder why things were happening to you. They answered all my questions for me and the doctors who I saw periodically would come down and explain things to me. I found the whole experience amazing and I can't give them high enough praise."
