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Very sad to hear about Steve Wright. Will write more about him tomorrow. Serious mournin'. Love the show Steve.
You can say what you like about my bollocks, but they are both doing as much as they can to entertain as many people as possible. One gave his life for comedy, but the bereft double act partner he left behind is not content to take a back seat. He's doing all he can to make life interesting too.
Not only did I get to go on morning TV today to take to a man called Balls about my balls (surely a hate crime on behalf of Good Morning Britain) which was weird enough - I then had a whole day to kill in London town before a testicle based chat in front of some lawyers in Moorgate (they weren't checking my material for libel - just helping to mark World Cancer Day).
And I had made the decision to use my down time to get my remaining bollock checked out.
One of the worst things about having had cancer is the cloud of paranoia that then follows you everywhere and the fear that the cancer might return. You are, of course, hyper vigilant for the signs and also capable of imagining things that aren't there. I've gone back to the NHS a few times with worries and it starts to feel a little embarrassing (even though in each case there has been some justification for my concerns - a large, if harmless lipoma on my side and a cyst on my remaining ball, which again turned out to be no threat, but gave me a horrible fright). I have been experiencing occasional dull pains around my abdomen, but unable to completely pinpoint them - could it be back ache, ball ache or just imaginary? But also when checking my ball (something that I have become quite averse to doing since I found that cyst as it was such a heart dropping moment) it has started to feel a bit weird. My wife, who contrary to my stand up routines does occasionally touch my scrotum, remarked last year that it felt like I had two balls still and I had noticed that there did seem to be a ridge dividing the ball in two - or something like that. But was it just the tubules or had it always been like that or was I misinterpreting its bean like shape. I'd only seen the oncologist in October or November, so I knew all my bloods were fine and he hadn't seemed concerned. And the good news was that I could no longer find the cyst.
I didn't feel I could ring the NHS again with another false alarm - I was the boy who cried cancer and just cos I was right the first time didn't make up for it. I'd rather die than have to endure the embarrassment of wasting anyone's time (and this, I suspect it partly at the heart of why men are shit at going to doctors).
But with all the dizziness and my weird feeling testis, I thought I should just reassure myself that I was fretting about nothing. So I looked up how much a walk-in private scan was, was surprised that it was relatively cheap and thought I'd give it a go. Also I felt justified in going private because I didn't want to waste the NHS's stretched resources on this hypochondria.
So after telling Ed Balls that my ball was fine, I got a cab to Harley Street and a man looked inside my scrotum using magic. In the private clinic they have a TV screen with the ultrasound images for you to view. The operator showed me my healthy ball and assured me all was fine for it. There was a big black gap next to it, bigger than the testis, which I assumed was the emptyness left by my expunged ball. In fact, it turned out, we had found my missing cyst. It had started off (two years ago) feeling about the size of a pea and though my oncologist had commented that it had grown a bit when I'd seen him, it was now absolutely huge. Bigger than my ball. My ball had grown another ball to keep himself company
Now the good news is that this is in no way dangerous or cancerous, but it is fucking weird. I mainly felt justified and quite pleased with myself. It wasn't my imagination. I am in touch enough with my body to know when something has changed and those dull pains might well have been caused by this large mass of fluid tugging on my poor little bollock.
The man who did the scan said that I could leave it as it is, but it might be a good idea to get it drained, especially if it keeps growing at such an exponential rate - weird that it's Valentine's Day tomorrow and my own Ferrero Rocher is doubling in size - so it looks like I might be troubling the NHS after all.
More relief, of course, that I shall remain monoballer (unless they accidentally prick the wrong globe) and another reminder to people to not be like me and IMMEDIATELY see your doctor if you have any concerns of this nature. Like I say - I seem to know my own body and probably should have acted on my mild fears a month or so ago. Just keep laughing about my remaining ball needing to make its own limelight, but not being brave enough to go full tumour. But it's annoying that my body seems to like making cysts and weird lumps of fat (and the occasional cancer) rather than just sticking with perfection and letting it be.
I had a slightly lost day walking round London (lugging a bag of books with me that I hoped to sell after tonight's gig - luckily I got through them all or I'd have been annoyed by the inconvenience) and then holed up at the ludicrously busy British Musuem. It took about half an hour to get in there (and that was with a members card that let me jump much of the queue) and there was strong security going in (maybe, given recent thefts they should do better at keeping things in rather than out. They took my sellotape and some sharpies out of my bag, which seemed a bit much - I had plenty of pens in my coat pocket which they didn't check. But they gave me a raffle ticket so I could some back and collect them later - in a plastic bag with a raffle ticket stuck to it, like the prize at a very shit tombola.
It was annoyingly busy inside too. I had some lunch in the members area, full of nerds, the elderly and the odd kook (me) and then looked briefly at the life in the Roman Army exhibition, but again, it was too crowded to really be able to enjoy or see half the stuff. But glad to see the famous statue head of Augustus that was discovered buried under a temple having been raided from the Romans. You know the one.
And after having been up since 4.30am (woke up early and no point going back to sleep - the Shepherd's Bush Hilton has one of the best breakfast buffets I've ever seen by the way, but maybe just because I got there right at the start) it was a stretch to do my evening book event, but it went really well and Paul, once a student comedian, now a very high-powered lawyer, did a great job of interviewing me. And I didn't have to carry any books home.
