I’m conscious of the fact I haven’t completed my blog for a while.There is no reason other than life. Life has got in the way of me thinking about cancer, which is a great place to be. I realised this had happened when I was having a moan about the results of the EU referendum and the England football team and thought Wow! Isn’t that wonderful to care?  After diagnosis and during treatment nothing could rouse me from my fearful state. Really, you could have said this whole life thing is just one big conspiracy theory and we are actually all aliens and I would have barely registered your mouth moving. But now here I am caring again.

The only recent event that happened that did make me pause, was the death of the great comedian, writer Caroline Aherne. She has joined a list of genius people that have passed away this year including Alan Rickman and David Bowie. Before my cancer diagnosis I would have been with everyone else thinking how tragic and sad, but having cancer as well adds another dimension to those feelings and that reaction was what made me blog today. Well that and being bullied by various people on why I haven’t been writing. Don’t worry you shall remain anonymous. I’m sure I’m not alone in my feelings and reactions, I would imagine other people with cancer feel the same. Now when I hear someone has tragically died, I’m shocked and sad like everyone else but I want to know immediately what they have died from and in the back of my mind I’m thinking ‘please don’t let it be cancer.’ Why? Because that confirms to me that people die from it. I’m not stupid and I know off course people die from cancer but hearing of a death makes it so real. When I am living in hope that all the advances are curing people I look at the celebrities who could perhaps afford to pay for the best care, and if they can’t survive it what hope is there for us mere mortals? After confirmation that all of the above passed away from cancer my next reaction is ‘of what? cancer of what?’ Please don’t let it be eye. My odds on it not being eye are luckily quite high, but only due to the rarity of the cancer and not the high survival rate. Caroline Aherne did have a form of childhood eye cancer. It’s different to mine, but hearing it stops you in your tracks. For a moment again the world stops spinning on its axis. I then feel very lucky. Lucky that I am still here caring about this thing called life. Caroline Aherne said that her mother told her only special people get cancer, so as she had eye, bladder and lung she must be really special and of course we know she was. An utter comic genius.  But I would like to stay not very special at all please, so that I can continue to moan about things that make me cross, phone radio stations (?!) as I did yesterday calling James O’Brien and forget to blog because, well because life has got in the way.