Five years free

Today is the big one! It's the fifth anniversary of being cancer free.

On 27th December 2005, I was taken into theatre and emerged, 90 minutes later, without the tumour and without a significant part of my anatomy. 

What a shame that had they identified that I wasn't so much depressed as physically ill some weeks or months earlier when I kept returning to ask for further investigations, I would only have needed surgery and not follow-up radiotherapy.  This is a theme I keep returning to - it's hard not to feel bitter about it, particularly when I hear the same story from cancer patients over and over again. Mostly, I can now think of it as being 'one of those things', but sometimes I need to allow the anger to rise; without doing so, I think it would simply fester and become an unhealthy obsession and a monstrous elephant in the room. The only thing that cheers me up and helps me to get things in perspective when that anger begins to rise - apart from brisk walks or doing some hard, physical work - is the thought of Spike Milligan's epitaph: 'I told you I was ill'. (Thank you, Spike).