A diagnosis of cancer

has come as no surprise to me. No, not for me so far but for a more distant cousin.

He has been a smoker, a heavy smoker until recent years. He "cut back" to twelve a day and then six a day but could never quite give the habit up. Now he is paying the price.

The first warning came a couple of years ago. He had a cancer growing under a finger nail. They removed it and part of his finger as well. 

Then, late last year, it was "prostate cancer". Oh it was not aggressive and it was "treatable".  Well yes, perhaps it is or was. I know other men with similar problems. One was diagnosed about eight years ago, had surgery and is "just fine". 

More recently other problems have developed for my cousin. His wife phoned me early last evening and said, "He's been diagnosed with an aggressive bladder cancer. They did a scan and it is in his hip and thigh bones as well."

He is currently enduring a month of radiotherapy. How much good this will do they have no idea. He is considered to be "too old" for surgery to remove his bladder. As the cancer has already apparently metastasized  I wonder about this.

It has come at a time when there is a government advertisement I see between the two parts of the news service I watch. It is an advertisement designed to encourage people to give up smoking. It tells people that smoking can cause "eleven different types of cancer". Bladder cancer is mentioned in it. 

I wonder if the advertising has any effect. I wonder if my cousin has seen it and, if he has, what his thoughts are about it. I wonder if he wishes he had never begun to smoke.

The Senior Cat, like the vast majority of men his age, smoked. It was a habit they took up during the war. The Senior Cat was never a heavy smoker. It would be the occasional cigarette here or there but he quit entirely when I was kitten in early primary school. He saw something on the desk of one of his lecturers at university. The lecturer concerned had been diagnosed with lung cancer. That was enough for the Senior Cat. He went over to eating peppermints instead. Never a fat man the little weight he put on was probably a good thing.  

I have never even tried to smoke a cigarette but it has not made me immune from the consequences of smoking. In my lifetime I have had to endure the second hand smoke of other people's addiction. While I genuinely believed the school library should always be open at lunch time I was also relieved I did not have to endure the smoke laden atmosphere. When there were staff meetings at university I would sit as close as I could to the always open window. My good friend A... would insist on it being open. We did not smoke. No female member of staff did. It was the men. 

"You don't think it is going to happen to you," one of the professors told us when he had to tell us that another one had been diagnosed with cancer. These were intelligent people but tobacco addiction is hard to kick, very hard.

Middle Cat and Brother Cat do not smoke. Their children do not smoke and their grandchildren had better not even think about it or their parents will have more than something to say. Most people I know do not smoke now. Some did but they have stopped. It has been hard but they have done it. Anyone who does smoke knows to stay well away from me. I will cough and sneeze and I feel as if I am choking on their smoke. Where is the pleasure in that?

I am so grateful I never felt the temptation to try. It may not stop me getting a cancer diagnosis at some point but at least I will know that it has not been directly caused by a decision I made to smoke. I just wish my cousin had made the same decision.