I was diagnosed with prostate cancer with metastases in April 2013. It was a bit of a shock, but when the shock subsided I found I was happier than I had been for as long as I could remember. Every man in his best state is altogether vanity, says the Bible. With the dictator vanity toppled by a few carefully chosen words from a urologist, I found I was unexpectedly living in the present, savouring every moment, and genuinely happier and more alive than I had been for years. Kinder too. It is such a normal, rational reaction to being diagnosed with a fatal illness, it’s a cliché, I suppose.
They wouldn’t say how long I had left. I guessed six months to a year, but a quick trawl of the prostate cancer website chat rooms indicated I had anything up to five years. I flogged some possessions on eBay, threw my heap of letters from the taxman in the bin, told my pals to dust off their dark suits, and went around almost bursting with love and happiness. I had been asleep at the wheel for 20 or 30 years, I realised. Finally I was awake. Life had meaning and quality. Ideally, of course, one would prefer to be without both vanity and cancer, but one can’t have everything. Better two or three years fully alive than 20 or 30 aiming for immortality and missing the point of it all.
Six months went by, then a year. My cancer was assaulted with everything that the NHS had in its arsenal. As my oncologist had promised, they threw everything but the kitchen sink at it. The radiation treatments were not unpleasant and they got me out more. I enjoyed them. I thought they might scan me afterwards to see what, if anything, had been achieved.
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