Rumours of my demise were greatly exaggerated

I used to think that Doctors were infallible. They could look into your mouth and tell you that you had strep throat. Tap your knee-cap with a hammer and diagnose rheumatism and most importantly give you a sick note when you need a day on the sofa under a duvet.

I learned recently that they are as fallible as the rest of us. I got a phone call twenty eight days ago to say that a routine scan had noticed something awry on my right lung. It’s four weeks since then and it’s been a rock and roll journey ever since. I’ve had scans, blood tests and a biopsy. Been diagnosed and then un-diagnosed with cancer. Told I might have a lung inflammation, then told I haven’t, then told I have it again.

But if you are going to be mis-diagnosed then it’s better to be told that you have cancer and then told that you don’t. It’s much better than the other way round. I was sent for a biopsy to see what type of cancer was swirling around my lungs. It brought me back to the dark days of 2010 when I was operated on, scanned and filled with chemotherapy drugs. In the midst of all that I remember how kindly you’re treated in the cancer system. The nurses and doctors in that system all seem to have a great sense of humour, which I suppose they need to have because of the work they do.

Despite their best efforts, biopsies are not fun. I had to lie on my stomach and stay perfectly still for twenty minutes while a needle was stuck into my back and sent on a journey through my rib cage and into my lung. They took four samples and the weirdest thing about the whole procedure is that I heard a loud snapping noise each time they did it, as though there was pair of fisherman shears deep within me that was cutting through bailing twine.

Three days later the specialist who had told me that I had cancer called me with good news. She said the biopsy wasn’t showing traces of it. The rest of the call was a bit of a blur to be honest. She mentioned something about getting the opinion of other radiologists. The most important message was that I should cancel the oncologist appointment I’d made.

What she didn’t do was apologise for the original diagnosis and the fact that it put me through two of the darkest weeks of my life. I’ve had cancer before of course and came through it. But that was testicular cancer, the one with the best survival rate. I convinced myself then that it would be the end of Cancer. You can cut out a whole testicle and be sure that you’ve got all the nasty stuff. With other cancers, you have to cut around the tumour and never be certain that you’ve caught everything.

When I got the news two weeks ago that I have a lung tumour, I was devastated. I’d gone from the cancer with the best chance of survival to one with the worst survival rate. In the ten years between the two cancers, I’d gotten married and had a daughter. The thought of telling an eight year that the big C had returned scared me, not least the fear that it would kill me and that she’d be left without a Dad.

It led to several sleepless nights and days filled with dark thoughts. All around me, the world was starting to get to grips with Covid 19. I hardly thought about the virus during those weeks while I lived within my own private hell. I think I handled it by trying to push as much of it out of my head as possible. It was probably not the smartest thing to do from a mental health perspective even if it did help me to get to sleep.

Now I feel like I’m not sure I have processed the fact that I had cancer to be able to process the fact that I don’t. My brain seems to be a month behind the real world.

That world, of course, is obsessed with the Corona Virus. I’m not sure if that has helped or hindered me over the past few weeks. I guess there is only room for so much anxiety inside your head at any time.

It now appears that I have Sarcoidosis, a word I didn’t even know until this week, even though it has been in my medical records since 2010. That’s a lung inflammation that seems to affect Irish people and Africans at a disproportionate level. Nobody knows why. But perhaps it explains why Jimmy Rabbit in the Commitments thought that the Irish were the blacks of Europe.

If you have Sarcoidosis, it can often sit in your lungs for years without you knowing. Expanding and contracting for reasons no one understands and occasionally making you cough or be short of breath. I’ve had both these symptoms over the years. My cough is so regular that I don’t even notice anymore. Others do and before the lockdown, I would often get strange looks in the supermarket when I’d cough in the dairy aisle and spark a Covid 19 panic.

I also get a little short of breath when I climb stairs. To be honest, I always put this down to being a fat bastard. But I’ve been working on getting fit over the last few years. I can do a 5km run and a 70km cycle. But a flight of stairs nearly kills me. So I guess I can put that down to the inflammation as well.

The doc told me not to worry about things. They will keep an eye on it and I might need a few more tests. But otherwise, I’ll clear cancer out of my head and fill it with worrying about Covid 19 like the rest of the world.