A date with destiny – and chemotherapy

I was shown to a room divided into three cubicles, each with a reclining chair and bed table. In the first, a nurse was vacuuming fluid from a man’s lungs. He was large and physically helpless with a beautiful smile. He had no voice but croaked breathlessly over the whirring noise of the machine. I set up shop in the middle cubicle and peeked round the partition to greet my other neighbour, a bird-like woman with a black head wrap. Her smile too was bright, with a suggestion that in her case chemotherapy is no longer the disaster it once was.

Six weeks ago my colon was resectioned. While she was at it, the surgeon laid a tube from my heart to an opening on my neck to facilitate the administration of any future chemotherapy. When people ask what the bulge is in my neck, I say it’s where they will insert the funnel and tip in the red diesel.