I had the results of my PET and CT scans two days ago and the great news is that the test for cancer was negative.

I started to feel and look different about two weeks ago and I was optimistic even then that the cancer was gone (there was suddenly a lot more colour in my face) but you stall getting your results as long as you can because bad news means more chemotherapy - the thing all cancer patients dread.

Of course the recovery process isn’t over but I can now realistically look forward to a time when my life will be back to normal.

Doctors being doctors, it’s not as simple as telling you that you’re cured. We live in a blame culture and there’s always the threat of court cases if things go wrong. The cancer can come back, especially in the first year, and I can look forward to check ups every 3 months for probably the next 5 years.

The longer you can go without getting cancer again, the less chance there is of it returning.

With non-HIV+ patients the doctors would normally like you to have even more chemo and stronger than the two kinds I’ve had already. This should reduce the risks of cancer returning but even then there are no guarantees that it won’t. This chemo would involve taking my bone marrow and re-injecting it after chemo. It would take 4 weeks for the bone marrow to re-grow.

It used to be different for HIV+ patients. Anything that damages your immune system is a risk for us and each chemo session destroys it outright. For two weeks immediately after chemo you run the risk of dying from infection because you can’t fight them.

Remember my friend Shaun who was in the opposite bed to me in the cancer ward? He was younger and stronger than me and as far as I knew, he wasn’t HIV+ but he died suddenly after acquiring an infection.

Doctors now think that due to the huge improvements in HIV medication (it’s no longer the death sentence it once was) that HIV+ patients should be treated the same. If I had this extra chemo, I would be only the second HIV patient at Barts hospital to undertake it (this does not inspire confidence).

My ileostomy operation was a precaution and look where that has landed me… two trips to A&E (I had another all-night stay when I returned to London) and I’m now urgently waiting on a free surgery slot to have that operation reversed before something bad happens.

Taking all this into account, I just don’t want to undertake any more chemo… and people tell me I’m a tough man or I’m brave!

Maybe when my ileostomy op has been reversed, and the tubes they put in my kidneys have been taken out, and I can walk normally again and go up stairs more than one at a time, maybe then I’ll be brave enough to have that extra chemo.

But for right now I think I’m cured and to have even more chemotherapy when I don’t have cancer anymore is asking just a little bit too much. And I’m not going to start blaming my doctor if cancer comes back.