IN AUGUST I began having difficulty swallowing food. By mid-September, breakfast was a pack of Dixee biscuits, lunch, another pack and supper was porridge. Trying to eat almost everything else was like choking myself one bite at a time.
On September 14 a barium meal in Barbados showed a blockage in my gullet. On September 15 I came to Port of Spain for the TT Film Festival and ended up in a medical festival. On September 17, my gastroenterologist, whom I trust absolutely, did an endoscopy and said, “We weren’t lucky. It’s not muscular, it’s a growth. I’ll get the biopsy report within 48 hours but I don’t need it. I’m telling you now that you have cancer.”
And I do.
Oesophageal adenocarcinoma, to be precise, a 4.5cm tumour almost completely blocking the end of my gullet at the top of my stomach.
Cancer.
But I’m a firetrucking Gemini!
The great thing about my doctor telling me so assuredly I had cancer was I went straight to acceptance. I didn’t waste even two days on false hope certain to be dashed, spent not one angry nanosecond, did absolutely no bargaining (especially no Why me Lords – this died-in-the-wool agnostic wouldn’t want to drive the Almighty to profanity) and no black depression before finally giving in.
I just nodded. I have cancer.
But it still feels strange to say it.
This sh-t does kill people.
From inside.
No betrayal like this body.
And you live your whole life, until you get your diagnosis, certain that cancer happens to other people; especially when you’re the first in the family to be diagnosed. I think I’d rather be the first Asian PM of the UK, like Rishi Sunak; or distinguished in another way; or not be special at all.
On the up side, everyone I know has been thoughtful enough to point out that the side-effect so many cancer patients dread will be a piece of cake for me: the hair loss precipitated by chemo.
Chemo.
Another word I thought simply wouldn’t apply to me for the rest of my life, like “brand new car” or “batting for West Indies” (though the former applies to most of us nowadays and the latter applies to no one at all).
Chemotherapy: the aggressive application of chemical drugs to kill cancer cells which grow faster and more furiously than any other cells in your body; like illegal immigrant babies in any good Christian country.
Cancer. Chemo. Chances are good.
Cancer isn’t a death sentence any more, said my nurse Rhonda, who cushioned her own dad’s treatment. (Astute readers of Trini to the Bone, my Monday Newsday feature, probably twigged something was wrong with me a month ago: two of the last three T2DB subjects have been nurses, one a lead oncological nurse: I met them when they stuck needles or chemicals in me.)
So now I’m part of a club I’d never have joined, if I’d read the rules and constitution.
I have cancer.
It’s still weird to say it, even a dozen paragraphs later.
Of course I was going to write about it. If Liz Truss can provoke a TGIF column, adenocarcinoma deserves a book. Of course I was going to tell you about it. How co
