I think I just became Exhibit A.
I am literally months away from my 5 year diagnosis. NED - that's no evidence of disease.
I had a specialist dental appointment the other day, I love my dentist - let’s call her X, we met under harrowing circumstances and I was sad to break up with my old dentist, as I had a soft spot for him, he was my dad’s dentist and understood the family genes.
Dentist X is a character and I love how we banter, it’s unusual and I had to learn that a lot of the medical practitioners don’t do banter, nor do they do humour.
I do humour, I do a lot of humour… in fact I use humour as a life bouy and get most of my dryness from my lovely dad, who as an educator was one of the best story tellers and joke tellers I knew, next to my Uncle Ken (Lou), an Irishman straight from Belfast.
It was inevitable some of it was going to wear off.
So through my treatment I used humour as a way of deflecting what was truly going on, I do this to ease tension, to bring anxiety levels down and not just my own.
Like the time I said to my Oncology nurse dead pan face, you know you’ll have to gaffer tape me to the bed to stick that cannula in? She didn’t quite know whether to believe me or not, there were times when I was deadly serious.