Many years ago, Angie and I decided to split up. She bought her air ticket back to Australia, and I arranged to drive her down to London and see her off at Heathrow. All very civilised.
There was one minor complication - I had been waiting months for a hospital appointment for a biopsy on a lump in my neck. My appointment had already been cancelled several times, because of nationwide nurses' and doctors' strikes. But I badgered the health admin folk till they did the biopsy, and on the day before driving Angie to London I got the results.
You know the expression "his hair stood on end"? I always thought it was just something they said in detective and horror stories.
All those years of whisky and cigarettes were paying off, in the worst way. Surgeon number 1, embarrassed, tried to cheer me up: "you're very lucky really - the best specialist in these cases works here in Glasgow, he's agreed to see you next week, and he'll be able to do any plastic surgery that you need". He made it sound almost like winning the lottery.
I went to see Surgeon no 2, who made a long phone call to the pathology lab. I couldn't hear what the pathologist was saying at the other end, but at this end the surgeon intermittently sucked air through his teeth and said things like "what a pity" and "oh dear". It seems I had hit the jackpot, with TWO different types of cancer in one. That's when I discovered the proverb: for every door that closes behind you, another slams shut in your face.
A week later, while Angie was in London consulting her friends over what to do with her life, I drove myself to hospital and checked in to get my neck opened up and lose the cancer and a few glands, nerves, and anything else they could take without turning me into a total Frankenstein. They would have amputated my head, if they could have done it without killing me.
When I awoke after the operation, I had a few stitches and drains, but I actually felt like a million dollars. The good old British health service had come through for me, in spite of all the government cost-cutting and the nurses' strikes.
I looked around, and saw that the guy in the bed next to me had his eyes all bandaged up. I asked him what he was in for. "A nose job, 2 weeks ago". So then I asked him - why the blindfold after a nose job, and why the long recovery period? He explained that, as he was coming out of the anaesthetic, he felt a blinding pain in both eyes - 2 student nurses had been cleaning his face with surgical spirit while he was still out cold, and they didn't realise you shouldn't spill alcohol into someone's eyes. And being semi-conscious he couldn't scream to alert them. His eyeballs were partially dissolved.
My own turn to experience amateur nursing came next day, when a sexy student nurse was given the job of removing the drained-off blood from the bottle at the end of my tube.
A month later they started giving me what someone at a noisy party once misheard as videotherapy ("Rob, I didn't know they could use video therapy now"). Actually, watching videos would have been almost as much use - the radiotherapy doc explained that my type of cancer wasn't really helped by radiation, "so we'll have to give you extra doses". It felt like sunburn in 3D.
For a while, I looked like an audition for a horror film - the students in my lectures that semester were strangely quiet and well-behaved.
Angie and I decided to stay together after all. Sweet. My father came to Glasgow to meet me in a pub, and he apologised selectively for some of the beatings when I was young. He must have thought it would be his last chance. A few years later he did the decent thing and died before me.
There are several permanent side-effects, but let me tell you, it's a lot better than being dead. And there were benefits. I'm unlikely to ever develop heart problems from being overweight. You too can solve your weight problems for life by getting cancer, but I'm not recommending it. There are no real scars, not physical anyway.
After that kind of experience you either use it to make your life better than before, or you go downhill. I've heard of people drinking themselves to death waiting for a recurrence that never came. These days I'm pretty well cured - I just need to keep doing the Half Narcissistic Therapy every week.
PS - if you'd like to chill out after reading that, try some international back care exercises.
