NED once more...

...all that needs to be said really. One more fence jumped in the never-ending Sarcoma Steeplechase. Disregarding unexpected return of symptoms I merely hang on until another year has passed before presenting myself once more to the screen of destiny.

My dear oncologist always prefaces her examination by asking how I am, to which I have no choice but to reply "You tell me!" I have become sufficient of an amateur expert (i.e a complete silly billy!) to take a squint at the X-ray plates first for signs of warning bright spots, but it still of course takes the expert reading to reassure me that there is nothing there that shouldn't be. Technicians who take and print the plates generally suck their teeth when they see the collateral damage caused by the necessary radiotherapy, but even that funny moment will be lost from now on as they're going digital and no longer will I have the pleasure of receiving a hard copy of the X-ray, all information passing from computer to computer.

One becomes accustomed, though never fully acclimatised, to these testing days. 'Scanxiety' usually takes hold some weeks before the event, climaxing in the seemingly endless minutes of perusal of the plates before the verdict is given and culminating in days following of complete nervous collapse as one lets go all the held-in fear and fret.

(A word to the wise. Never say to someone who is about to be scanned this way "You'll be fine", as the only possible riposte - and one I have to own I have used as the occasion demanded - "How the f*ck would you know? You've seen the frigging X-rays/MRI already then have you? Since when have you been gifted with the effing powers of clairvoyance!")

What we are all who have this thing (soft tissue sarcoma - think cancer of the muscle, bone, body fat or sinews and you'll be as close as you need) on the look out for is secondary spread to the lungs [mostly], the brain [occasionally, though generally via the lungs] and - men look away now - in rare cases the penis. The little chancer is prone to wending its way through the bloodstream seeking suitable sites in which to nest and grow.

If that happens - we call it metastases - then you can lop it off, you can poison it, you can nuke it, but you can't finally destroy it. That particular snake is only ever scotched not killed - a thing beyond remedy though not, as Lady Macbeth would have it, beyond regard. (There is one Norwegian - I believe - paper that posits that smokers with sarcoma are at reduced risk of pulmonary metastases, with a certain logic that no self-respecting sarcoma cell could expect to thrive in the toxic pit that is a smoker's lungs. That my excuse anyway for sticking to pipe and cigars!)

Once there settled it will inexorably and exponentially expand taking over healthy tissue, eventually - in the case of lungs - causing death by more or less asphyxiation, or drowning if it breaks through into the plural cavity. (Rather like that scene in the first 'Alien' film where the monster bursts forth from John Hurt's chest - only of course in slow motion and without the creature then vanishing into the heating ducts!)

People can and do live lengthy and happy lives with secondary sarcoma, but generally once that Rubicon has been passed it's more a question of booking the world cruise right now and bring the pension pot it will be needed on board.

Thus although the years pass and the statistical risk, therefore, reduces one never quite escapes that teetering and vertiginous sense of being on an edge. A dream still haunts me from those early days:

I'm lying face-down on a thin, transparent plastic film suspended over a bottomless dark chasm between two cliffs. Friends on either cliff are urging me to move and come back to them and to safety, but I know that any movement I make will cause the plastic film to rupture sending me crashing into the darkness. I can't even lift my head or close my eyes to escape the sight of the blackness beneath. Someone tries to crawl out over the film to come to me, but all that does is to make it flutter and stretch like a sail in a high wind. They must go back and I must remain utterly motionless gazing into bleak eternity. If I could scream I would, but even that relief is denied me.

...And for someone who looks for ceiling straps in aircraft to hold on to just in case the floor gives way, that is a potent image and memory!