Wick (John More): Week 3 – 31 October

I learned a useful pointer the other day that I thought I’d share with you. When making a cup of tea from a teabag, especially if it has one of those paper tags on a cord, make sure that you put the teabag in the hot water with the tag dangling outside the cup, and not, ahaha, the other way round. (Follow me, as the saying goes, for more helpful cooking tips.)

Chatham Light, Cape Cod

I went back to the hospital at Inverness last week, for the consultant to take another gander at the growth on my vocal cords. I’m starting to dread the moment she gets out the lubricating gel and starts sliming up the laryngoscope, the metal device that goes up one nostril and then down the back of the throat. It’s along, slender fibre optic tentacle with a glowing tip, and it’s hard not to feel as though ET’s decided to pick your nose for you and didn’t know when to stop. I keep expecting to feel a tickling sensation in the brain, and it’s always a surprise when instead it emerges somewhere down by the uvula. The worst part is when they ask you say “Eee” with it in position, which is a bit like trying to drink a glass of water and whistle at the same time.

More Adirondack Colour

The good news is that, a year on, the growth on my vocal cords is much the same and the consultant is now pretty confident that it’s “nothing more serious” (which is, I’ve come to learn, the medical term for cancer). It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since I was first referred, and in that time the medical profession has been concerned about possible cancer on my vocal cords, my lymph nodes, and my thyroid. It was only a matter of time, I felt, before they became concerned about my navel, my knees and possibly my big toe. So even though I’m living my life in six-month slices (like the man in the old joke falling from a tower block, who as he passed each floor they heard him say, “So far so good… so far so good”), and the doctors use “probably” more than I could wish, this feels, literally, like a whole new lease on life.

Reflected colour on the river, Sutherland, MA

The growth is still there—there’s no point in removing it as the consultant says it’ll just grow back in a few months—so I’ll probably have a croaky voice till the end of my days. I’m also being referred for a CAT scan on my sinuses, which may be infected (words you’d rather not hear when a doctor is inside your face: “Ooh, there’s a quite surprising amount of pus”). But these are mere details. Now I have another year’s worth of ganseys to plan for. But first, a cup of tea…

[Editor’s note: Margaret’s away in the States just now, but is able to upload images to the blog remotely. This will explain the rather startling variation in quality between the main image of the gansey, taken by me on my phone, and the rest. As Hamlet observed, when comparing the poor quality of his uncle’s holiday snaps with his late father’s much better ones, “Oh, what a falling off was there…”]