Cancer 5
While most of the time I can get on with living reasonably normally there are moments, minutes, that are difficult. I lie awake at night, but I have always done that so that is no different really.
I have just spoken on the telephone with a nurse about my pre-op. I now have a date for it, so again it is becoming more real. My insides are all churned up, an area encompassing my heart, lungs, stomach, etc feel heavy. The neurotic inside me is alive and well, making me feel unwell. I know this feeling will go away in the next minutes, but at the moment I am sitting in a cafe writing this with my phone and my new folding keyboard, looking at the people around me who are living their normal lives, unaware there is a cancer in the room.
OK, I realise there may be other people in the room who have cancer, or people who know people who have cancer. I realise everyone has their own interesting or less interesting life stories, but cancer makes your own story somehow more important than others, it provides a focus around your own life. I see the woman at the next table fanning herself, probably going through the menopause. There is a family of four at another table. They look a bit hippyish and the parents probably treat the children a little too much like adults. There are older couples sitting drinking tea and eating soup, who presumably have been through everything life can throw at them – but today, now, with my churning stomach, I am the centre of things.
I would rather not be.
Dr Nigel Hunt 
Your comments remind me of how my life stood still 11 years ago when I was told I had breast cancer. It was like a conveyor belt, the surgeon, the physio, the prosthetic nurse, the scans, and finally the day of surgery which of course was really the first day of the treatment. Its quite a journey and strange relationship with yourself as you embrace and reject in equal proportions of curiosity and fear. Keep going and big hugs.
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