For me, cancer came out of nowhere.
As I've written about quite a lot, my life and it's various routines were pretty settled. Family life, looking after the kids, football, work, little trips away starting to become a reality again - thinking of getting back on the snow more, maybe taking up golf, running up and down 6 a side pitches for as long as my knees, and a grumbly ankle, would let me. It might seem limited, humdrum, but I was at the stage of my life where I knew what I wanted, mostly had what I wanted, looked around me and pretty much liked what I saw.
I had my routine, and friends, both people that I saw regularly - people at work - and people that I didn't see very often - my college mates say, mostly London based. But I was as sociable as I wanted to be, although I'm sure a little more wouldn't have hurted. Then all of a sudden, this was all torn asunder. I mean, there were signs. The cough that wouldn't go away. But you start to justify these things to yourself - ok, it's...a cough. Or, I've got flu, whooping cough, or a change in the weather. But my routines didn't change.
The GP sent me for an X-Ray. It came back with a "consolidation" Even then I wasn't worried, following the GPs lead, because he didn't seem that worried. He explained that a consolidation could easily be something like pneumonia.
Then one night, I woke up with difficulty breathing. We ended up calling an ambulance - even their reaction was comforting, as, although they certainly didn't say as much, I got the distinct impression that they thought I had overreacted a bit, and that I needed nothing more than painkillers. I sat in an A&E bed until about 5 in the morning, by which point the painkillers seemed to have done their job, I felt a lot better and went home. In the meantime the A&E doctor told me I had a collapsed lung.
At this point though, the GP signed me off work, referred me for investigations and generally started to take everything a lot more seriously. Investigations were more x-rays, a bronchoscopy (which I referred to before), blood tests and a CT scan. From my own research and talking to the GP, I knew that cancer was a possibility, but lots of other things were more likely - tuberculosis, pneumonia, sarcoidosis. In particular, younger people tend not to get lung cancer, it's an old persons disease.
But of course, it turned out to be as bad as it could be - cancer, which had spread and therefore couldn't be cured. So, following that trip to A&E, I haven't been back to work. It is so strange to have your routines ripped away from you. One day I had my little life, my well worn path through the days and weeks, my touch points. Then literally within 24 hours, all of that was taken away, to be replaced with a slowly unfolding nightmare, where I had to relearn all the rules, to learn to play the game all over again.
Take all your chances.
