Home Thoughts Weekly

Ma modelling her splint Time: A little after 3pm . I am slowly digesting the radiology report following my CT scan which has just been read to me over the phone. Normal. I don’t think a word has ever sounded so good to me. I still have the symptoms, but it isn’t caused by a growth lurking in my sinuses. Huge, tearful relief.  It’s been a productive week at Hotel H , I’ve been balancing work – so tantalisingly close to the end of Book 3 – with trips out with Ma who’s been staying here. We’ve just been for lunch at a garden centre before I crack on with another 1000 words. Ma, who’s been pottering in the garden, calls out from the back door. ‘Have you got a plaster?’ ‘I’ll get you one,’ I say, getting up. And at the back door I see what looks like the aftermath of a fight in a black pudding factory. I know a little blood goes a long way, but a lot of blood goes even further. Ma has fallen out of the greenhouse, gashing open a varicose vein on the frame and badly twistin...

Having devoted much of my recent worries to my sinuses, I wasn’t in the slightest bit concerned about yesterday’s appointment to see a consultant dermatologist about a tiny patch of red skin that’s been lurking on my upper arm… When my name is called , I breeze in and am greeted by two smiling faces; a consultant, about my age, and a trainee doctor. I present my arm fully expecting to be told off for wasting valuable NHS time and sent packing with a tube of cream.  ‘Ah,’ says the consultant to his trainee, ‘what do you notice about this lesion?’ Lesion, I think, is not a word I like, but hey-ho, this is doctor-to-doctor talk, so I listen to an explanation of stretching the skin and distinctive pearly edges, still waiting to be sent home in the next breath. ‘So,’ the consultant tells me, ‘what you have is a basal cell carcinoma, and I’d like to do something about it straight away.’ In that split-second a small part of brain screams ‘F*CK!’ and another prompts me to tell the...