"My thyroid cancer arrived by accident, in the way life-changing things sometimes do. In May of this year, I went for an upright MRI for a minor injury on my arm, and the scan happened to catch the mass in my neck. By the following month, I had a diagnosis. People kept telling me it was the good cancer, the kind that can be taken out neatly and has a high survival rate."
"I felt as if I'd stepped across some irreversible Rubicon that you hear about happening to other people, but never imagine will actually come for you. After my diagnosis, I retreated. I barely left the house. My neck was bruised and swollen, as if I'd attempted some sort of gruesome Halloween makeup. I felt peeled-open and humiliated, as though strangers could look straight through my skin."
"Friends and family stepped up: my brother, who lives hours away, and I had this incredible chat for hours on a park bench in the sunshine. Still, I curled inward. It wasn't until later that summer that my mum managed to coax me out for lunch and a trip to the Whitworth Art Gallery, in Manchester near where I live. There was a JMW Turner exhibition on."
A thyroid cancer diagnosis was discovered incidentally on an upright MRI taken for a minor arm injury. The diagnosis followed quickly, and others described it as a 'good cancer' with a high survival rate. A family history of cancer intensified fear, and the narrator delayed telling their eldest son. The diagnosis prompted retreat and isolation, with visible neck bruising and feelings of humiliation and exposure. Friends and family provided support, including a long conversation with a distant brother and a mother's coaxing to visit the Whitworth Art Gallery. A Turner print, Mount St Gothard, unexpectedly arrested the narrator's attention while awaiting further test results.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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