Well today is the day when the theory becomes reality. For three months now have been living with the notion that I do have a Lurking Lump Well today is the day when the theory becomes reality , aka cancer and carried on my daily routine, interspersed with the odd medical appointment.

Well today that changes as at 10:25 I meet the consultant, Dr. F* who will tell me what they are planning to do to me in the coming months.

But then as the 19th century Prussian General von Moltke wrote “No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force.” Today all the reading about medication and exotic herbal remedies becomes academic as I enters the combat phase when hopefully I can start eradicating the Lurking Lump!

But combat means ‘engagement’ and that implies likely casualties - on both sides. I don’t suppose that whatever is proposed will be pleasant as any intervention sufficiently powerful to eliminate the LL will have consequential side effects. I have known enough people who have been treated for prostate cancer to realise there are all sorts of possible problems but the fact that I ‘know them’ means that they survived.

And so shall I!

The current social distancing rules make the visit to the specialist cancer a little off-putting. The waiting area, with the ‘Clients’ (more of this later) appearing as individual islands of humanity, each wrapped in their own, no doubt sombre, thoughts. Conversation is not really a possibility as talk sufficiently loud to be heard by someone two metres away will reach many others so we all sit in a void of silence.

And so we all sit there, all with the same life-threatening condition, with each of us facing our uncertain future in our individual ways. There is no doubt that cancer is an experience which every individual has to face in their own way and to me it seems the best way is to learn from the experience of others who have trodden this path and listen carefully to the advice given by those who are there to aid and support us.

10:25
Like the good doctor who is advising me right now. Darn the man - like all the staff I seem to meet, he reminds me how old I am. But here he is, a consultant, looking to me as if he stills waits for the lollipop lady to help him across the road, telling me in a very gentle and clear manner exactly what my problem is …

Well for a start, I’m a man so I have a prostate which, has like prostates up and down the land, decided to go rogue.

T3b rogue…

Which means that is good news - it may be an aggressive cancer but it is simply confined to the prostate and the seminal tubes. That means I am (hopefully) a simple case for treatment with hormones and radiation treatment.

Here-after radiation is to known as ‘Mekon Death-ray’. For those of you too young to remember the ‘Eagle’ comic of the ’50’s and early ’60’s had a lantern jawed space hero called Dan Dare whose deadly enemy was The Mekon. Somehow, however desperate the situation managed to outwit the dastardly Mekon and dodge his fiendish weapons as will I.

P.S. **I have since checked him out and whilst he gets plenty of peer reviews for cutting edge work he did on prostate cancer, I still think he has to wait for the lollipop lady.