I'm sitting here in a very normal family living room. My dog would quite like me to wash up, my two boys are in the garden playing football, and my husband, John (let's call him John) is making his traditional start of the world cup visit to the pub with his friends. It's strange how everything is still normal or teetering on the edge of normality. We are still going to work, we are still laughing with our friends, we still stay "I'm fine thanks, how are you?" when we see our acquaintances. Hell, I still tell people we're going to Croatia on holiday this summer. Ha! Unlikely now....
This whole bloody nightmare started on the 19th May this year. Perhaps we will find out it started sooner. But that was the day John found the lump on his neck. A big, egg-shaped hard lump near to his collarbone that doesn't move and doesn't hurt. "Go to the doctors now" I said at 5pm when he came in from work. He did and miracle of miracles he was seen. Unfortunately they couldn't say "oh it's just such a thing". The doctor watched him swallowing, prodded it a few times and promptly sent him for a chest x-ray and blood tests. We waited two weeks for his results appointment, me anxiously as I'm a googler, him not so much so as "it doesn't hurt". Again the doctor couldn't say "oh it's such a thing". This time he was referred to the hospital.
Our appointment was this week. The consultant was very nice but he wants us to trust him so he doesn't want to give false hope. It's a tumor, he confirmed, by sticking a big needle in it and seeing no liquid come out. The chances are a) it's benign as a result of a strange infection (his words), b) it's a lymphoma, or c) it's secondary cancer. He didn't want to speculate on what it could be until John has had his biopsy and CT scan this week, but he gave us a Macmillan nurse, so my guess is he is not optimistic...
