Hopefully not the last post

In October last year, I finally quit the ciggies. A pack-at-least-a-day habit.

In November, I was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer on my lower lip.

If there is a God, he has an evil sense of humour.

I had radiation treatment, which due to the Christmas break didn't finish until January 8. Six weeks all up. My tastebuds, along with any Yuletide spirit, were obliterated.
The fact I was being zapped by machines named Titan and Phoenix, as if they were superheroes (or at least pro-wrestlers), somehow made this bearable. It's the power of camp.
This is Titan, I believe:

After a few weeks, the hair at the back of my head had fallen out; I looked like I'd given myself – in the throes of drunken nostalgia – some tragic nod to A Flock of Seagulls. Also, I'd had to have all my lower teeth extracted, plus a top one. My dental plate, reliant as it was on the one upper tooth the hospital removed, subsequently didn't fit properly and was often popped in my pocket when people weren't around; it was soon lost somewhere along the Hunter River, probably because I got excited by the sight of those bloody cows across the other side. Remember?
In other words, I'm another Maitland hillbilly.

It was all fine for a while, the hair grew back, my sense of taste returned, I had new teeth organised...
But bugger me, I found out last month the cancer's back, and this time it requires surgery.
A lip-wedge extraction, which sounds like an extreme-pole-dancing manoeuvre, will be followed by some throat-slitting to remove lymph nodes.

Irradiated skin doesn't heal as well as it would otherwise so I imagine, should I get through all of this, I might resemble one of three characters:

1) A Bond villain, physically and emotionally crippled by a sense of injustice and unfulfilled vengeance; the personification of damaged goods.
2) An extra from Deliverance – unfortunate unattractiveness used to maximum advantage.
3) Someone so woefully inept he couldn't even accomplish suicide. This, I don't think I could handle.

I must concoct some suitably thrilling/glamorous/butch scenarios immediately.
A riverbank knife-fight comes to mind, but then I've always been open to suggestion.

[Two weeks after I wrote the above and saved as a draft.]

Well, I just received a call from John Hunter Hospital. I'm scheduled for surgery this Friday.
Quicker than I thought!

Tomorrow morning shall be spent with mum and dad, giving them an antiquing tour before they catch the train home, then I'll wait for an afternoon phone call from some hospital person to give me my "fasting information".
I can only imagine this means "don't eat anything". Not so hard.

Thankfully the Zoloft has kicked in. (To the uninitiated, that's an anti-depressant – named, I presume, as a combination of "zombie" and "aloft". Rather apt.)

Wish me luck!

Update: Just found out I could be in hospital for a week or more. This keeps getting worse...

Update 2: Having mum and dad staying for two nights was lovely, but occasionally frustrating. We also had several fits of laughter. 

All in all, quite normal.

I'm ashamed to admit it took Mick to ask them the simple question of why they moved to Australia from Belfast for me to hear the story. (Our family has never been big on nostalgic tales.)

Anyhow, not yet married, 19 and 20 years old, they were walking through miserable, rainy Belfast weather and saw a big poster, presumably of a beach, saying something along the lines of "Come to sunny Australia!"

They looked at each other and decided, why not? They got married, had the requisite tests and were on the Oriana within three weeks as ten-pound Poms.

I really should have known that...