I went for my diving medical on Tuesday.  I passed, despite having to step up and down off a chair for five minutes, which may be fine if you’re a 6ft North Sea commercial type but not if you’re little me.  I left clutching my certificate and on the verge of tears.  I’d put it down to hormones if I had any left.  It was at last year’s medical, in August, that this same doctor spotted the offending lump and so set in train the medical saga of this past winter.   He retires in June and so it will be a different doctor next year.   GPD saw him earlier in the year for his medical and thanked him for, in effect,  saving my life.  Sounds corny, but it’s true.  I’d had no symptoms so the cyst could have gone unnoticed for many more months and I would then have found myself in a totally different place.

The next couple of weeks mark an anniversary of sorts – the sort I would generally rather forget.  I’m doing the Great Edinburgh Run on  Sunday, more out of pig-headedness than anything else, as I’m not really ready for it.  In fact, after that step test on Tuesday, any movement below the waist is agony, so 10 km?   Get real, GPM.  But I digress.  Last year after the GER I went off down to Cardigan Bay on fieldwork, as I’m doing again this year.  And then Jane came over from Ireland, we dived together at St Abbs and the day ended at the Royal Infirmary, marking the start of a pretty grim sequence of events.   Jane will be back again this year, same week, and we’ve arranged to meet.  I might just skip the diving, though.   Even if I have got a shiny new medical certificate.  

Fortunately for me, life goes on and I’m hoping that the run this Sunday will mean that an awful 12 months is now behind me; I think that’s why I’ve been all emotional and about to blub this week, something that hasn’t happened since the initial shock of the cancer diagnosis in October.  

And, of course, there’s still time to sponsor me!