Stupid Cancer

After leaving the appointment, I sat in the car without starting it. The keys were in my hand. The vehicle knew its function; I had temporarily forgotten mine.

There were calls to make. Family. Work. Perhaps a friend. The phone felt heavier because touching it would turn the diagnosis from a private nightmare into a shared fact.

I rehearsed opening sentences. "They found something." Too vague. "It might be cancer." Too frightening. "There is a mass in my colon." Accurate, but likely to produce immediate questions I could not answer.

What I wanted to say was: I am still here, but the version of the future I was using this morning has been canceled.

I did not say that. I called and gave facts.

I wanted the world to indicate that something had happened. Sirens, dimmed lights, a respectful announcement. Instead I received a parking ticket under the windscreen wiper.

I asked the oncologist for numbers because numbers had always made uncertainty easier to manage. In business, a percentage could support a decision. In oncology, it could support a decision while also giving anxiety a decimal point.

We discussed recurrence risk with and without chemotherapy. I wrote them down. The handwriting became smaller as the consequences grew.

"Three months or six months," I said, putting both options on the table. Benefits, toxicity, neuropathy, evidence. The doctor explained. I listened like a project manager reviewing options for a project whose failure condition was death.

There was no clarity. We made the best choice using the evidence, my condition and my preferences. Medicine is often heroic in retrospect and conditional in real time.

I signed the plan. The numbers did not become less frightening. They became part of an action.

I created a Zoom support session because connection seemed useful and because organizing other people's fear was easier than organizing mine.

At the advertised time, I opened the room. Camera on. Notes ready. Participant count: one.

I waited. Five minutes. Ten. The empty squares remained professionally empty.

After half an hour, I closed the most orderly cancer support meeting in Europe. No conflict, no oversharing, perfect time management.

I scheduled another and called it "Laugh Therapy," a title deliberately grander than the budget. This time a person joined. Then another. We talked about fatigue, scans, fear, bowel function and the strange guilt of suffering when someone else had it worse. Nobody needed inspiration. We needed recognition.

One evening, chemotherapy tablets sat in my palm while a calzone cooled on the hotel desk. The contrast seemed worth documenting: advanced oncology beside folded pizza.

The instructions required food. The body required negotiation. Taste and nausea had become unpredictable, but the calzone smelled possible, which during treatment qualified as excellent clinical news.

I ate enough, swallowed the tablets and looked at myself in the mirror. No warrior. No inspirational soundtrack. Just a tired father on a trip trying to remember whether the nausea medicine had been packed in the bathroom bag.

The calzone became memorable because it was not medically important. Survival stories need details that refuse symbolism. I did not eat it to defeat cancer. I ate it because I was hungry and the tablets required dinner.

Around the same time as follow-up, reading glasses became necessary. This felt like an insult from the future I had fought to keep.

Menus blurred. Labels moved farther away. I increased phone text size and blamed software design. Eventually the evidence became stronger than vanity.

At the optician, I was told this was normal for my age. Normal for my age. The phrase was beautiful and unacceptable.

Choosing frames restored vanity to its rightful position. Some made me look intelligent, some older and some like a man preparing to challenge a suspicious clause in a contract. I chose the pair that lied most kindly.

I placed the glasses beside the medical report. One helped me read the other.