So, on we go…

A letter arrives from the NHS:

Dear Mr Johansen,

Thank you for returning your bowel cancer screening test kit. Your result showed that no further tests are needed at this time.

I am also returning the contents of the stool sample you sent us. It was disgusting.

Yours Sincerely

Sajid Javid

I may have made up the second bit, but the first bit was word for word accurate. My reaction to the arrival of the NHS envelope from two years ago was very different.

My last testing kit sat on the dining room table for several weeks on the grounds that I hoped it might go away. A friend getting bowel cancer, having not been old enough to be tested, jolted my stupid self into action. This time, I returned my sample by return of post and I opened the envelope containing the results virtually before the envelope landed on the floor.

Weirdly, I had not a trace of nerves about taking this test, whereas last time when I delayed in so doing I was secretly very anxious. What if I take the test and it turns out I have bowel cancer? It doesn’t bear thinking about, except that of course it does. Doing everything straight away was strangely satisfying, knowing that if doctors’ catch cancer at an earlier stage you have a better chance of survival. Act like an idiot and dither and you are far more likely to die. What is it about idiots like me and, it needs to be said, my fellow men.

The test is simple to perform. The most time-consuming aspect is going to the post box to send it off. Last time, I fretted about the dreadful diagnosis of cancer and me asking the question, “How long have I got?” “Let’s put it this way,” he might reply. “Don’t bother to book next year’s holiday.” And that fear was entirely my own fault.

So, for the next two years my bowels are okay and if I die it will be something else that does the dirty deed to me.

As I stagger into old age, there are a million and one things that could cut short my time on Mother Earth. At least it won’t be my bowels, not yet anyway.