Cancer Ward Two

When you put down your pen at the end of your last exam you are no longer a student. When you have sex for the first time, you are no longer a virgin. And when you are diagnosed with cancer you are no longer something. And what that something is I’m not quite sure. But that’s what I’m trying to get my head around.

I got good news during the week, which I guess is relative in the current circumstances. There is no indication that the cancer has spread beyond the tumour that now sits in a jar in some suburban pathology lab.

But if there is one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it is that there is no obvious destination. Nobody is going to say to me, “Thank you very much, you’ve been a model patient. Now toddle along on your merry way. You are cured.” Once you’ve entered the cancer building, you never really leave.

There is a sequence that you need to follow when you get on this merry go round. Ultrasounds, blood tests, surgery, CAT scans and more blood tests. It’s a familiar story to those that have waited in corridors for news of relatives and friends but it’s a world that was unknown to me until three weeks ago.

I now have lots of relatives and friends anxious to hear news of me. And I can’t help feeling that it’s actually worse for them. They are helpless and impotent. They want to do something, but apart from the occasional joke to keep my spirits up, there is not much they can do.

I, on the other hand, just have to lie back and let the doctors do their thing to me. My only job is to design a strategy to win the war that my own body has declared on me.

I’ve gone through all the emotions from denial (it’s not a lump, it’s just the way I’m sitting) to despair (why me, when I was just about to embark on my dream career as a porn star) to anger (how could you do this to me body, after I bathed you once a week whether you needed it or not).

The doctors are looking after my physical recovery, although their advice could be distilled into a single message, “wear tighter underpants!” But it is my job to manage the mental recovery.

I think it was Freud who said that our biggest battle in life is with ourselves. I’m not sure, but I know that Tony Soprano said “we are our own worst enemies”. And that’s never truer than when you are touched by cancer. This isn’t a virus that I developed after being with someone I shouldn’t have or an infection I picked up after exposure to dodgy flies or insects. This is something my own body did to me, the ungrateful pup. And the response will have to come from me.

There are some upsides of course. I’ve managed to get down to the target weight that I’ve longed for these past fifteen years. I’ve also been banished to the sofa for a couple of weeks which has allowed me to catch up on all those DVDs that I’ve been hoarding. And what has this taught me? Woody Allen is no longer as funny as he once was and Pedro Almodavar is a sick Spaniard.

My home confinement has also coincided with coverage of the Commonwealth Games. I’m a sports fanatic but any competition that is weak enough to allow Jersey to win medals does not appeal to me. Australia takes the games seriously for reasons that are beyond me. The coverage is so one eyed that it makes English commentary on the World Cup sound like the enlightened prayers of Buddhist Monks.

I have to confess that I’m a poor patient. I used to dream of being able to lie on my back and watch any DVD I choose. But it truth, it becomes pretty boring after a few days and I realise now that I’m a social animal who craves conversation and the opportunity to make people laugh.

But one thing people keep saying to me is that positive thought is the most important thing at the moment. So I’m treating this like a second life. An opportunity to start again and to leave behind all the anxieties I used to have (to be honest, they all seem insignificant now anyhow) and to embrace life.

So I’ll be doing that over the coming weeks while I wait on word from the doctors on what my follow up treatment will be. I’ll be telling the people I love that I love them. I’ll be savouring the freshness of hops in a cold beer. I’ll be licking the side of the ice cream bowl and crying when I see Chilean miners emerge from seventy days trapped in the bowels of the earth. I will re embrace all those emotions I chose to bottle up these past twenty years while I worried about superficial things like careers, property prices and whether my belly looked big in my favourite t-shirt.

This is a chance to start again. To see the world in a new light and I want to embrace it with both arms. Because at least I still have two of those.

I’m still not out the woods but at least I can see the clearing ahead. I have to see the specialist on Wednesday for the results of my last blood test. No doubt there will be some treatment after that. Much of this journey is about waiting for appointments, for tests or for your body to do its thing and settle down. But I take heart from those Chilean miners. They have shown us that waiting can be worthwhile if it brings redemption and a chance for a second life.

I am buried in a dark hole at the moment but I can hear the rescue shaft being dug and I know that I will shortly breathe clean air again.