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The second was that the clinical trial, while it would offer better care, would also carry an increased risk. At the finale, I would end up as just another statistic in its eventual report. I don't want to be a statistic, I've got too much that is precious to me to surrender that lightly, so it was here we drew a line.

The main problem is the spread of the cancer to the liver. If that can be controlled, or even reduced, then the surgeons will operate later to remove the tumour from the colon. The knottiest question is how best to treat the most vital organ? At best the clinical trial is hit and hope, so the solution has to be found elsewhere. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Within hours, with help from my sister on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, we had tracked down reams of information about potential treatments that could offer hope.

The best seemed to be on offer at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, one of the top three in the USA and regarded as one of the world's best research establishments.

Revolutionary techniques being tested there include planting a pump into the abdomen and also treating with standard medication - a sort of onetwo punch. Of 156 patients, half of whom had standard treatment, 86 per cent of those treated with the double whammy have survived to two years and 90 per cent had no recurrence of liver tumours after two years.

Other techniques include cryology - sinking probes directly into the liver and freezing cancer cells with liquid nitrogen - and injecting a mix of drugs straight into the hepatic artery that feeds the liver.

Nearer home we have also found that the Royal Marsden Hospital - Britain's leading centre in excellence - has helped to develop raltitrexed, the first new chemotherapy agent in colorectal cancer for almost 40 years. It is claimed it is as effective as the most widely-used cancer-fighting combination, 5-fluorouracil and folinic acid, but with possible milder side-effects.

Irinotecan, another new drug, is causing a stir in the medical world, and may be another that holds out hope.

And here's the rub: If you show a commitment to survival, if you seek for yourself some possible alternatives, then the physicians and surgeons whose hands, skills and knowledge are chained by health authority rules, will help. It turned out that there is a doctor in Bristol experimenting with similar freezing techniques, another in Southampton is trying to blast away cancerous liver cells with high-frequency sound waves or boiling them. It's the old adage: Ask and you'll be told.

So we're here right now, waiting for the second round of the fight to begin, waiting for the dates when something will begin to happen.

Of course, none of the treatments we've discovered may be suitable, but someone, somewhere, knows of one that might or a trial that could.

Like many others faced with the same awfully short future, time is now a precious commodity that I am greedy for. Stuff it, why ask for a few more months when I should be asking for years, or better still, the lot? Shy ones never get what they want.