Merry Cancer!

“It’s not urgent, but we need you to get a mammogram asap”


Nothing like coming home to this message on the old voice mail to make a gal’s Monday night. At least it was my doctor calling and not some recorded message, like Emily at Bell -- For leukaemia, press one. For biopsy press two. For carcinoma press three. If I ever met Emily I’d shove her into an alley and put the boots to her London student protest style …Ah, the London student protests of last week … takes me back to the riots of Thatcher’s England. Ah sweet bird of youth!


You know you’re getting older when your blog becomes a forum to kvetch about health matters. As if you care …

But care I must. Seems some nasty cells have accumulated in my fun bags. It’s disconcerting thinking I may have some gunk blotting otherwise pristine landscape. Must say, I’ve always been proud of my guns. They are the stuff of sonnets, of ballads and monosyllabic grunts. But even I saw something on the ultrasound when the technician smoothed the wand over my person. It looked like the Gulf oil spill, a big black patch on an otherwise gauzy image.


“Have you had a mammogram,” she asked.


“Uh, three years ago, I think.”
I tried to be nonchalant,  yet all I could think about was my sister Diane, who went through the whole breast cancer rigmarole four years ago.


I had the ultrasound on a Friday. That Monday night the doctor calls me telling me it’s not urgent, but to get my diseased knockers  down to the nearest x-ray clinic.

As I write, I am waiting for the results from my mammogram. I’d like it to be delivered as a singing mammogram:


Everything will be fine/your tumour’s benign!


So, it’s that weird twilight time, of waiting and trying not to think about what might be, which might be CANCER.
Wouldn’t it be something if I had breast cancer? I mean – how trendy.

In the meantime, I’m imaging myself tossing gifts and presents from Santa’s sleigh – all my socks with holes in them, rusty spoons, old paperbacks and other assorted possession – to pedestrians on the street. Merry Cancer! And no one would stop, no one would break their stride. We all have Christmas shopping to do, after all.

I’m thinking about the great Irwin Barker and how he shook this mortal coil. What a gift he left people.


Am I being self-indulgent right now? Probably.
Am I sorry? No – because I may have CANCER.

All I ask for is your pity.
Stay tuned!

Oh yeah -- listen to this if you want. I'm on Comedy Above the Pub with the ever effervescent Todd Van Allen and Darcy Flander.

http://comedyabovethepub.com/