LANCASHIRE Telegraph health expert Dr Tom Smith has told how being diagnosed with cancer allowed him to see a doctor’s role from the other side.

The family GP, 69, was told he had a tumour in his bowel after a routine screening in June.

Surgeons were so concerned that, within three weeks, they had taken away part of the intestine to ensure that all the cancerous tissue was removed.

During the agonising six-day post-operative wait for pathology results, Dr Smith used mental techniques likened to self-hypnosis to help keep him from thinking the worst, and at the end of it was told he had the all-clear.

He said the experience had helped him gain a clearer understanding of his professional role - as well as the value of pain management.

Dr Smith said: “Finding that you have cancer isn’t easy, and waiting the short time for it to be treated is even worse.

“I’ve dished out bad news often enough over the years, and every doctor knows that one day we will have to take it ourselves.

"When it came for me, I naturally didn’t like it, but I had to be as matter-of-fact as I could be in the circumstance.

“I reasoned that I was fit to begin with, had not felt in the least unwell, and was therefore likely to be one of those who would survive.”

After a full-body CT scan to ensure the cancer had not spread and the operation was likely to be successful, Dr Smith had surgery at the beginning of July.

He spent three days under epidural pain relief, which he described as “pain-free bliss”, but had to rely on paracetamol to fight the pain from drips replacing vital potassium minerals into his blood.

He said: “That’s when I learned how good a painkiller paracetamol really is.

"Another drip containing it immediately eases the pain so you don’t have to suffer in silence.

“In practice, when I have prescribed paracetamol to people with chronic pain I’ve always doubted how well it would work. I don’t have those doubts now.”

But Dr Smith said the most important thing he learned was from a colleague who practices medical hypnosis, who visited him in hospital on the night before the operation and gave him a few pointers on concentrating his mind.

He said: “She showed me how to think, virtually self-hypnosis. I had to choose for myself the best place and time I had ever had in my life, and step back into them, in my mind. I had to concentrate on the details, and take myself through the scene – re-living the experience.

“I chose a scene in my early teens, when I used to go fishing in a small rowing boat in the Kyles of Bute, and whenever I started to worry about my circumstances, I ‘transferred’ myself to that time. Over the next few days I had plenty of rowing boat time.

“It kept me sane. I’ll use the rowing boat in any future health crises.

“But in the meantime I’m happy to look on this episode as a small blip in my life that is done with. I’m so glad I had the screening.

"If I hadn’t I’d still be walking around with a life-threatening cancer inside me, completely unaware of the danger I was in.”