The Game's Afoot...

No slouch our GP Dr. P. Fixed me up to meet and greet with a certain Dr. D, certified consultant in the skin trade, for last Friday

Nice chap our Dr. D, with good manners and clearly knowing his business. Took me through the basics of what he was seeing: "Large dark centre, almost black and slightly raised. A starfish shaped corona of a lighter colour." (OK 'starfish shape' is my image, but it gives the flavour of the thing.)

Said, indeed, all the right things except for: "I'm afraid that very much looks like a melanoma to me." To which, from my carefully crafted list of pre-prepared questions, I could only respond: "B*gger!"

So having again carefully explained next steps (initial excisional biopsy) and likely further action dependent on test results (wide excision, maybe sentinel lymph node biopsy) we exchanged phone numbers in the hope he can do me privately sooner rather than NHS later.

Am now confirmed for tomorrow pip emma, which is about as swift as swift as can be. The game, therefore, is quite afoot, though precisely which game we'll have to wait and see.

It might prove simply be a little horrid something that can be cut out, binned and never heard from again; or could be something so very much more threatening and nasty, leading to Heaven's knows where and when. (Still, of course, the minutest scintilla of a possibility that it is just masquerading as a melanoma in order to add some confusion to the medical text books. But I'm not holding the front page on that, and neither I suspect is Dr D.)

Funny - in the odd way - having (probably - I cling to that for now) a cancer you can actually see and touch. The sarcoma was a protruding lump easy to spot under the skin and to run the hand over, but it's something else altogether when you can actually stare it in the face and touch it with the finger. Been doing a fair amount of that this weekend!

Not exactly feeling too chipper about the whole thing today to be honest. (English gentleman's code of course for feeling totally freaked and more than half out of my mind!) It's not so much the having of the cancer itself (probably, as before) as facing going through the whole thing once again.

All the steps and stages, the uncertainties, the anxieties, the hopes and fears (of me and mine), the waiting and the wondering. Those repeated times when each appointment begins with one of two chances: the good option of 'Hey, the tests were clear. Go celebrate', or the bummer 'Sorry to have to tell you, we've seen something.'

I lived with and through that for the first five years of sarcoma - for the first two years every three months. Had the energy to cope with all that then. Don't feel quite so strong this time round.

As our dear American cousins will say: 'Sh1t happens.' Or as I would, in more Anglo-Saxon mode, would put it: 'B*gger!'