On Friday, I overheard a normally calm colleague getting unusually tense while talking on her mobile. I could hear the other voice quite clearly, and that voice was very agitated.
Being the nosey parker I am I hung around to see what had happened. To cut a very long story short, my colleague’s father had a pain in his side and had had an x-ray which showed a shadow on the lung. He is an ex-smoker (some 30 odd years now). Sounds very familiar.
Bugger.
Anyway, on Wednesday, a diagnosis was given. Yes, a cancer of the lung. Having given out the necessary sympathy already on Friday I explained what I have gleaned, namely, there is more than one sort of lung cancer and there is the added complication of staging that adds to the mix, so you have to wait to hear what the medics say, and also, to hear what he, the patient, wants to know and hear.
I also added Macmillan is a great place, even if one only lurks and there are some wonderful people here with stories from the good to me with the not so good.
Bugger again.
Three people close to me, the father of a colleague only some 4 or 5 metres away from me, all affected by cancer. I cannot help but feel I am an unlucky talisman. Such think is, of course, irrational. But who ever said cancer helps us be rational?
Philip Larkin famously and notoriously wrote “They fuck you up, you mum and dad”. Cancer does a better job of it than your parents ever could.
Bugger, for the third time.
