Take them

In the end, on Monday, we went out to join our friends at the local pub. We still hadn’t heard back from the hospital. We got back. The answerphone was flashing. It was the hospital. I immediately rang back.

They’re going to squeeze the Fox in later this week.

Yesterday the phone went. The hospital. Only this time it was the Breast Clinic. Would I consider having an interview concerning my breast cancer & its treatment? They’re wanting people they can quote in publicity leaflets, or who would give talks, to promote the importance of taking up mammograms when they are offered. I would be able to see anything before publication & could withdraw my permission for its use if I wasn’t happy.

 I agreed to do it. As it is, I tell everyone I know to take up any screening for cancer, whether its smear tests, mammograms, or, now these days, the one for bowel cancer. (The latter is one of the celebratory joys that comes with reaching 60.) Certainly I’ve had cancer twice now. In both cases, I would not have known if I had not taken up the screening. In both cases, if I had waited until I had been able to find symptoms, it would have been too late. I would have been dead by now. The only hope with cancer, it seems to me, is find it early & get treatment. Sticking your head in the sand is a sure way to an unpleasant death. My mother – she died in 1978 from pancreatic cancer – always stressed to me as a child, if, in the future, there are ever tests for cancer, take them. There is a lot of cancer of various sorts on both sides of my family so take them. I did take them. That’s why I’m still alive & I bless my mother for her foresight every day.

Anyhow, it now means when we leave Dermatology, we are walking across the road to the Breast Clinic for my interview. It’s going to be a busy day.