Homesick for England, family and friends, I flew back, and the next day went for a long walk with my brother.
We’ve both had the same cancer, my brother and I, and we’ve both been chemically castrated. We attend the same oncology department, and we are both recovering.
(In my brother’s case this is almost miraculous, given that when his cancer was first identified it was found to be spreading as rapidly as Islam in the 7th century.) And for both of us, the shock of diagnosis, and the prospect of an early death, was quickly followed by a surprising joy, which intensified during treatment, then diminished as the tumour shrank, the alarm bells died away, and the prospect of a reprieve became first an undreamed-of possibility, then a reality. Apart from the breasts,neither of us would have missed our enlivening experience for the world.
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