Not this shit again, Death! Can't we just play Twister instead?

I've talked about death a lot on this blog - back in 2021 I was almost obsessed with it, and more recently in 2023 I said how hard I was going to fight what was going on with my liver. But of all the random shit Death comes up with to scupper your plans, who would have thought something as seemingly innocuous as a stye / chalazion could illicit one of the most chilling text messages I've ever received. 

So I went to the GP (getting a GP appointment is like trying to walk backwards up a Victoria Line escalator in the rush hour) to get this thing on my eye looked at, which had stuck around way too long for a stye (though my failed attempts to get an appointment didn't exactly help). 

She took a look at it, and also my rosacea (which is the 'good news' bit, I think I've finally found something that works that won't kill my liver). Tutted a bit, you know like mechanics do when they look under the bonnet of your car. Then sent me on my merry way with a prescription and a promise to get the eye issue referred on. 

The referral, as it happens, came by text - to the Cancer Assessment Unit. Cancer. Imagine having no fucking idea that it could even be a thing, then being hit by a text message telling you that's where you're going next. 

Fucking Cancer. FUCK FUCK FUCK. 

I guess as I said back in 2023, jinxing things or mocking death will catch up with you in the end. I'm not a supersitious or religious person but fuck me, I do wonder what the hell I've done to deserve a health meltdown in my late 50s despite ALWAYS taking the healthy approach. 

It's now got me wondering about relatives who smoked like chimneys, drank like fish, basically ate whatever crap they wanted yet still lived well into their 80s and 90s. It's got me wondering about all the folk I know or see who basically snort through their nostrils whenever I dare mention vegetarianism or being teetotal, or never touching cigarettes (smoking is a whole other level of gross though, I mean the very smell of a distant ciggy is enough to make me retch). 

So round...ah fuck it I've lost count of what round it is. Death, you may be cute as depicted in Neil (spit) Gaiman's Sandman series, but we're not going on a date any time soon. I'll fight you again as I always have, for the sake of my girls if nothing else.