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The Middle Aged Spectator and the Guilt of the Cancer Survivor

In October 2012 I was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. By mid-November the tumour had been removed along with much my oesophagus and part of my stomach. Due to the nature of the tumour I did not have to endure any chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

I am aware of four other men, all married, three of them with children, who were diagnosed with other cancers around the same time – between a year before and a year after. Brain tumours, liver and bowel cancers. All of them are dead.

I can’t help but wonder when I cross paths with their wives, and for one of them it’s every few days at least, that when they look at me they think, ‘Lucky bastard. Why couldn’t it have been my man?’   Now, none of them has ever said anything remotely like that, and all have been as friendly and as pleasant as you would expect long term friends or acquaintances to be, but I think it. Every time.
Now, I’m not losing sleep over this, and I don’t think I require any sort of therapy, but it gnaws at me.

What was the difference? Why am I still here, and one of the 18% who survive 5 years after diagnosis of oesophageal cancer?

My condition was spotted early. I had no external physical symptoms. My tumour was discovered during a gastroscopy to monitor my Barrett’s Oesophagus which I had been diagnosed with a couple of years earlier. Barrett’s is sometimes precursor for oesophageal cancer. I know in the cases of the two friends who succumbed to brain tumours, both had exhibited symptoms prior to diagnosis and the condition was advanced. For one of them, a number of misdiagnoses did not help his cause. Liver and Bowel cancers are renowned for their metastatic qualities, so chances are reduced if one is slow to act. But I have no knowledge of their specific cases.

A colleague who thought she had beaten ovarian cancer has recently been informed it’s back and serious, and the struggle begins all over again for her.

And meanwhile I am still going strong.

I appreciate my life, and my privilege. I take pleasure in performing and noting acts of kindness around me. I am grateful for what I have, and I make a point of thanking people for what they do. I think I am a more mellow and relaxed person now than I was prior to all this. So that’s a good thing especially for those closest to me.


I don’t believe there is any profound meaning or purpose in my survival, when others have not. But I do make a point of trying to make the world around me a little more pleasant for my being in it. Is that enough?

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