5th October 2009

The previous day I started The God Delusion by the much talked about, and forthright atheist Richard Dawkin. On reflection, it probably wasn’t the best book to read the day before getting the results that would announce me cancer free, or cancer imprisoned. Any divine intervention would have been welcomed at this juncture. I won’t get into Dawkin’s beliefs, or any of his hypotheses, for they have no place here, least not yet. I mention it because I had taken the book with me to the Outpatients of Calderdale hospital. After my last visit had taken over 80 minutes, I didn’t want a similar amount of time to progress slowly by, allowing more of those dark clouds to gather over my head and force me to reflect negatively on the next hour. Sadly, I couldn’t concentrate on the book. I re-read paragraphs because I couldn’t remember a single word. Every time a nurse came to the front of the waiting area with a brown folder in her hand and called out a name, my heart sank and the ink pressed into the page before me melted away leaving behind only a brilliant white. They are awful places, waiting rooms. The hesitancy and dread is something you can almost taste, and while it borders on the offensive, I can’t help but glance around the room at all the patients and reach unfounded conjectures to their illnesses. The elderly remind me that the body will always fail. The child reminds me that time isn’t always a factor in this. And though we are all very different, of different ages, different colours, different beliefs, different homes, different fashions, different loves and hates, we are united by one thing – hope. We sit there and we hope that beyond the waiting room those brown folders that hold our medical history have no mention of the words, malignant, tumour, positive. We hope that the doctors are cordial, have a good bedside manner, or at the very least, make eye contact when they tell us the results. We hope that soon the weight we’ve been carrying for all those weeks or months will finally lift and we can once again stand straight and look out inside of down. We hope that we did the right thing, and that all the negative thoughts we harvested were silly. We are united by hope, and divided by chance. Today, I was given a second one. The doctor who saw me came in to the small cubicle and glanced up momentarily from the results to say, “We have good news today.” That was all I needed to hear. My weight was lifted, my back straightened, and my heart swelled. In the briefest of time I saw myself teaching my daughter how to ride her first bicycle, saw myself dancing with my wife, and smiling with friends. It is easy to become mawkish when given life changing news, but I didn’t care. I wanted to project ahead and render to my mind clichéd moments, for they were moments I thought I’d never see, regardless if they happen or not. The doctor shook my hand, and said again, “very good news”. He quickly looked over the scars on my back before returning to the sheet of paper in front of him. The medical prognosis was relayed as follows – upper legion (John), benign. Lower compressed legion (Clarence), benign. “Good news, indeed.” I was told to keep a stringent eye on any mole that changes colour, weeps, ulcerates, bleeds, become itchy, or changes size. If I see any of them acting “strangely”, I was to get in contact. He then shook my hand again. Then he was gone.I walked to the car like a man reborn. I had my life back. It was October, but it was a warm day, the sun browning the dying leaves. I saw a father guiding his two daughters home from school. They were much older than my daughter, at least five years her senior. As I passed them I wanted to stop and pull the man to one side and whisper in his ear, “Don’t ever take these moments for granted.” But I didn’t. I went straight to the local pub and ordered a pint of Guinness. I am not a drinking man, least not anymore, but today was for celebrating. I send a message to my wife to meet me there. I then sat down and picked up from where Dawkin was enlightening me on Secularism, the Founding Fathers and the Religion of America. I can say, just as before, those words found it hard to override the thoughts in my head. But whereas before those thoughts were dark and oppressive, each had now turned bright and cheerful, which is the mood my wife and daughter found me in when they arrived half an hour later. My wife said she always knew. She has an inner certainty of optimism, one much greater and stronger than I. And if I may be permitted to make one more syrupy remark before I close this entry; it is because of everything she is that I will always have hope, and it is for her heart, and that of my daughter’s, that I will always be with love.