Cancerous Capers: 'Please, you mustn't let me turn into a sanctimonious, religious, hippy prat'

Published on Tuesday 27 January 2009 20:59

When Jamie Ross, a 19-year-old student, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, he decided to write a blog, just for a laugh. He called it Cancerous Capers and all this week we will reprint extracts of his funny and insightful writing

PART FIVE

I DON'T know how you like to start your day, cancer fans. However, I'd venture that very few of you would choose to wake up by receiving a letter which, in its very first sentence, informs you that you have a "slightly low sperm count". Avid readers of this blog will know that I had to give a sperm sample last month due to the small chance that my treatment could make me infertile.

I don't know who invented chemotherapy, but his efforts to iron out the flaws in his creation can only really be described as lacklustre. If he went on Dragon's Den, he'd no doubt present something revolutionary and fantastic, much like Reggae Reggae Sauce, but it would probably cause eight of your toes to fall off and make the Earth explode.

Apparently having a slightly below average count is of little consequence to me, but they thought I'd get a kick out of this emasculating piece of trivia anyway. They claim that the low count is "most likely" down to my illness which, to me, sounds like a thinly veiled suggestion that I have rubbish testicles. I am reassuringly told that they have "great motility", which means that, although perhaps low in number, they are a force to be reckoned with. Much like the Spartan army.

They tell me that, "if I desire", I can get another sample tested after my treatment ends. This choice of words places me in a terribly awkward situation. Why have they given me the option of whether I want to go or not? Surely I now can't return without looking like a deranged fetishist who loves nothing more than romancing himself in a hospital?

They go on to say that I have to contact them as soon as I enter a serious relationship so that they can sort out the relevant consent forms for the use of it. This raises the question, how am I supposed to bring this up with the lucky lady? At what stage in a relationship is it acceptable for me to suggest that her name should be written onto my bottle of sperm?

This also means that somewhere in Ninewells Hospital there will be an inevitably long and depressing record of each successive failed relationship that I have had to cancel consent for. Perhaps the sperm receptionist will also moonlight as a handy relationship councillor for me. "Oh dear, what happened this time Jamie?" "Same as last time Doreen: I told her I needed her date of birth and address to fill out the form for her to mother my test tube spawn."

In the final paragraph they inform me that I don't have Aids, which was a relief. Finding out I had both cancer and Aids in the same month would have been somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow. Due to my HIV-negative status, my sperm has now been removed from quarantine and placed into the main storage tank. This is also a relief as I was growing concerned about its limited social options.

PART SIX

Cancer changes people. A glimpse at any cancer support website will reveal a number of previously sound-minded people turning to religion, outlandish voodoo medicines and writing pieces of poetry about their experiences with, more often than not, hilariously inept results. Personal favourites of mine include I Wanted To Be a Dancer, But Then I Got Cancer and the inspiring verses of Cancer Slayer which, coincidentally, is the only name that I will respond to after my treatment.

Now this is fine, people cope with things in their own ways. I've sometimes thought that me writing a blog with funny cancer jokes is my coping mechanism, although really, I just do it in the hope that I can guilt a company into publishing my inspirational tale so that I can swagger into my second-year English lectures as Jamie Ross, published author. However, the arrival of seaweed supplements and green tea to the house this week at my explicit demand have confirmed what I feared all along – I'm turning into almost everything I despise.

A stark memory I have of the day of my diagnosis is of telling my Mum that, whatever was about to transpire, she mustn't let me turn into a sanctimonious, religious, hippy prat – a fate that appears to have befallen so many of my cancerous comrades.

I've fought it cancer fans, lord knows how I've fought it, and yet I'm currently sitting underneath a Buddhist healing pendant, which is suspended from my window while enjoying my afternoon snack of seaweed tablets and a mug of unfathomably disgusting tea. As I indulge myself in these patently frivolous measures, I can only look at myself in my mirrored wardrobe doors and forlornly ask, what have I become?

Am I now consigned to a life of doing yoga, eating Actimel yoghurt and tutting at people who smoke? Am I going to transform this blog so it's just a relentless series of rubbish poems about cancer? There is just no telling how far my impending twattery will stretch, it is a beast over which I have no control.

I've also thought about organising an event for the Teenage Cancer Trust, an act which would previously have made me think that the person doing it was an righteous idiot desperate for people to think that he was a fantastic man. A shameful belief to hold, perhaps, but one unquestionably justified by the mere existence of Bono, inset, from U2.

What this particular charity does, however, is build hospital wards for teenage cancer patients to save them from the perils of hanging out in a treatment room that could easily be confused with a mortuary due to its withered inhabitants – a fate that greets me every fortnight.

Being 19, I'd just be able to sneak into one of these teenage wards and be treated as a cool, worldly wise older cousin. I can just picture the scene as plucky youngsters gather round to ask me about girls and suchlike, and then me having to desperately make up lies to keep up my painstakingly constructed illusion of coolness.

There is also every chance that the creation of such a ward would bring me face to face with the cancerous young lady of my dreams. I can imagine few more romantic scenarios than our eyes flirtatiously meeting through a transparent chemotherapy drip bag, talking for hours on end about our various dire states of health pausing only to vomit every now and then. Do look out for the posters around Kinross advertising my massive charity extravaganza – "Give what you can to help Jamie Ross prey upon young, female cancer victims."

However, what I ask of you – my friends – is not a charitable donation to aid my seductions. I need you to support my attempts to cling on to rationality. If you see me buying any grocery product that has been described as a "superfood", slap me really hard in the face. If I tell you to stop smoking, light a cigarette in front of my eyes, smoke it and then stub it out in my ear. But, most of all, if you see me within 100 metres of a church, I demand that you physically incapacitate me by any means possible. I hope I can fully place my trust in you to be cruel to be kind.

• Read more from Jamie at cancerouscapers.blogspot.com