It started with a new and
enthusiastic doctor who looked at my file and family history and immediately
put me down as a walking heart attack. She signed me up for a scan that checks
out the calcium levels on the old ticker.
I went along and got the test done,
fully expecting a call two days later to tell me to give up beer and fried
food. The call duly came and began with the dreaded sentence “Well the good
news is…”
Turned out the good news was that
my heart is healthy and the years of abuse I’ve given it have not caused the
damage I expected. It was the sentence he followed up with that knocked me
back. Although they were looking at my heart, the lungs are in the vicinity and
the doctor noticed something nasty on the right one.
I thought I’d beaten cancer, but
the truth is that when you think you’ve had the last word in an argument with
this disease, you’ve actually just had the first word in the next discussion. Ten
years ago, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. You get monitored for a
decade afterwards. My tenure was due to end this September and I foolishly
thought I could file this chapter away and get on with the rest of my life,
only mentioning it when I wanted to court sympathy or when those Christmas
conversations turn to “what was the best and worst of times in your life”.
Initially, the doctor thought it
might be a latent infection. Coronavirus is the topic de jour at the moment and
I was checked for all the symptoms of that. The irony is that I’ve never felt
healthier. I had no pain, no swelling, no unexplained blood on the tissue, no
hacking cough or other sign that something was amiss.
I was sent for a more detailed
scan and that came back with confirmation that it was a tumour. I think I had
anticipated this news. The day before my consultation I developed a stiffness
in my right arm. It felt like I’d damaged a muscle and I could hardly sleep
that night. When the tumour was confirmed the next day, the pain in my arm immediately
disappeared. The mind truly works in mysterious ways.
The fact that I’ve been through
this before helps. I know a lot of the terminology and I’m not setting off into
the unknown. However, the fact that it has now come back indicates that it can
come back again. Perhaps every ten years for the rest of my time on this mortal
coil, I will be visited by the ghost of the Big C.
Things are different this time
though. In 2010, I went to the doctor on a Monday afternoon and by Thursday
morning I was on the operating table having my left nut removed. It all happened in such a whirr I didn’t have
time to think, or more importantly to worry about it. Things are moving more
slowly this time. It’s two weeks since that first scary call and whatever it is
that is squatting rent free on my right lung is still there with no date for
when it is going to be evicted.
They had to do an MRI first to
see if it was indeed a tumour, then a biopsy to see what type of Cancer it is.
The oncologist called today to say that he’d see me in eight days’ time. I
guess the thinking is that this thing has probably been in there for a while
and it’s not going anywhere soon. Or maybe he’s just on holiday this week.
My doctor reckons that cancer
treatment has come on a lot in the last ten years. I’m hoping this means that I
just have to take one tablet with a glass of water and it will all go away. But
I fear that I’m being optimistic. I think it will mean a lot more tests,
surgery and then a course of Chemo or radiation that I will be told is
specifically targeted at my genome sequence. One way or the other, it will be
shit.
I always assumed that lung cancer
was reserved for smokers, for those who puffed on Woodbines behind the bike
sheds and progressed to a sixty a day habit. It seems this is not the case.
I’ve never smoked a single cigarette in my life, having been put off them by my
Mother who was a heavy inhaler and hated herself for it. It seems that your
good old genes can also cause havoc in your cell structure. Half of cancers
fall into this category, the rest into the “caused by lifestyle” ones. These
are the smokers, the heavy drinkers and the ones whose diet causes issues in
their stomach and gut.
My doctor explained that these
people are filled with remorse when the cancer sentence is imposed on them. I
expected her to say that this put me into the lucky group as I have now had two
cancers that are caused by my genes and not my nihilistic lifestyle. Our group
she said are filled with anger. Crying “why me” into an uncaring black night.
It’s strange for this to happen in
what are uncertain times. The rest of the world is worried about Corona Virus while
I sit here with my own concerns. The two will interact. I’ll probably need an
operation at a time when hospital services are stretched to breaking. If I end
up getting Chemotherapy, then my immune system will be shot and it’s not a good
time to be like that when a virus is swooping around the world.
At times like this, you just have
to hunker down, control the things you can control and try not to think about
what everything else. It’s not easy but writing helps me to keep my mind off
things. So, expect more random nonsense over the next few weeks.
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