Holed up in a budget hotel in the middle of a desolate town, I’m doing my best to pretend I’m on holiday. But, instead of a vast sandy beach and sangria, I can see a lot of concrete while I’m doing my best to eat the so-called “premium sausages” at the breakfast buffet.
The desolate town is my hometown and I’m in the hotel because water leaking from a pipe in my shower has seeped into the walls and under the flooring.
Or, to put it a bit more poetically, the water has flowed like the cancer cells that spread from my bowel into my liver and the lining of my stomach.
I said “a bit more” because it’s difficult to be too cheerful after a visit from a “drying out man” who had to smash most of the tiles from behind my shower so the wall could dry out.
Taking them off with a little crowbar did seem like it was a lot of fun and I was tempted to ask if I could have a go. Now though I’m worried about how everything will get restored once the bathroom is considered to be dried out. I have five spare tiles and the product code for replacements but am not sure if they are still manufactured. What happens if they aren’t?
I have so many questions and keep coming back to something a healthcare worker said to me after I’d been diagnosed with incurable cancer.
He said: “The universe is testing you man. The universe is testing you.”
And that’s what this is. I first reported the water damage to my insurance company last May and it’s taken until now to get the repair works started.
This would have stressed me out if I’d nothing else to worry about.
But instead last summer I was able to combine it with my anxious wait for any news from my medical team about whether radiotherapy would be an option.
It would have involved being in hospital every weekday so a masterstroke would have been to have the drying out then so I’d be in a hotel near to where I needed to be for treatment.
Last autumn and early winter I managed to combine it with worries about whether or not it would be possible to have an operation on my hernia. Having cancer really does put everything into perspective.
I’d say that water damage in my home definitely isn’t as bad as incurable cancer, though I can understand how it would be devastating for people who have lost family heirlooms in floods.
But I would say that a play I saw at an open air theatre in the summer of 2023, shortly after I was diagnosed with the disease, was the worst thing that happened that year.
My family disagrees with me but it included a dull professor giving a lecture about Greek tragedies and it was simply awful.
And a flourless chocolate brownie I had at a coffee shop near an art gallery in London was definitely worse than cancer.
Life is all about perspective, especially when the universe is testing you.
