John was diagnosed with Oesophageal Cancer, and underwent surgery at St Thomas’ under the great care of Bob Mason and James Gossage plus a whole raft of dedicated and wonderful medical staff. By way of background information John comes from an Italian immigrant family from a small village in the South of Italy and like lots of Italians in the 1930’s who came to the UK where his parents made and sold ice cream! He left school and after a number of jobs from a musician to mechanical engineer in the pharmaceutical industry retired after 36 years in the criminal justice system. John’s Italian heritage is very important to him as are his son, daughter and two granddaughters. John has belonged to the Knights of St Columba, a Catholic charity, which looks after the less fortunate in our society for over 51 years and is a  licensed radio ham (call sign G0CRI).

Since being cured of his Cancer, John has, at every opportunity when speaking to groups of people, raised awareness of reflux and the consequences of ignoring the problem and at the same time urging people suffering from reflux to ask to be referred to specialists as soon as possible. Sadly John’s father died from Oesophageal Cancer over 30 years ago and his 45 year old son is being monitored for the same condition.

“My hope is that we support each other in various ways such as meeting up, having discussion groups, inviting specialist speakers to our meetings”