7704/20643
Apparently wanting to write a book or come up with a best selling TV format is not enough. You actually have to do the work as well. I don't think I can be bothered. Hopefully someone can salvage something from my blogs and we can make some money from that. My arse is not getting applied to the seat. At least not the one I write in. The one I play iphone games in is getting pretty worn out.
Don't worry I've thrown in the towel many times in my career, justifiably because I've been getting walloped and it's cruel to keep the thing going for the few spectators who remain merely out of morbid curiosity. But the referee never lets the fight end. I will be back.
Just not this week.
I've been thinking a bit about my cancer this week - though I still have largely not accepted I ever had it. But once you've had cancer, even if it's gone away, it's hard to put it entirely to the back of your mind and inevitably you think about it coming back.
I did pretty well in the first year, when I actually had cancer, to not let it get to me too much (though of course there were times when it did- especially before it was out of me, though I distracted myself with humour and getting fit), but the next year, as I wrote a book about it and found a lump on my remaining testicle (harmless as it turned out to be) was more psychologically scarring. The next year, even though I was doing some stand up shows about it, I seemed to have mainly got over it - the alarms that had rung in 2022 had been false ones and I felt I conquered it - and all tests came back suggesting that was the case (as recently as November).
But weirdly these last few weeks it's been bugging me again. Although I would encourage you to self-exam every month, I do find that bit quite traumatic - partly because by doing so I have found problems with both testicles (the second time luckily benign, but the first time pretty serious) and partly because it's actually quite difficult to remember how things were before and to imagine problems that might not be there. And then when you have doubts your mind and body collude to make you think things are aching or feeling a bit weird. After all I wasn't sure that the original feelings were genuine and the GP even thought it was nothing to worry about. And there comes a point where you're the boy who cried "Weird Testicle" too many times, even if you did spot a weird testicle the first time (may be time to rewrite that story).
Having done my Ball podcast I know that some people breeze through cancer and can turn off the negative thoughts, but others dwell on it and can't escape the fear. I vacillate between these states. I am pretty sure that there's nothing wrong this time and that my ball has always been weird (well they are aren't they?), but that won't stop the paranoia.
I suppose I am just writing this down to say it's OK to feel this way. And also the NHS will keep seeing you no matter how spurious your symptoms. I am full of wonder about the size of the universe and the unlikelihood of existence, as the last two entries have shown, but I suppose at the back of that lurks the possibility (and certainty) of no existing. Much as our lives don't matter in the long run, I need to be here for the next 15 years for my kids.
I guess even if the ball cancer came back it would probably not kill me. I'd just have no balls. Bad news for most men, but giving me material for another stand up show, so swings and roundabouts or something that swings and no roundabouts.
Fuck me I have lived a lucky lucky life. There's no way any of this stuff is real is there. But I intend to enjoy whatever comes next regardless.
