The Tumours Made Me Interesting Read Free

deteriorated, the more vital my care became. My mother went from resisting it to depending upon it. My father made no effort to re-enter our lives. It was probably for the best. Had he returned, he would have found his place occupied by his youngest son. The wife he once had was gone. She was now defined by her disease. Most of us wind up caring for our parents – some just start doing it sooner than others.

    Our childhood is like a really complicated recipe, made of many ingredients. These ingredients form a batter that is cooked into the people we become. It’s virtually impossible to get this batter right, and any inconsistencies will show up in one way or another when we’re finally cooked. The inconsistencies in the batter form our humanity and are just as important as everything else. Perfect batter will give birth to boring results. When it comes right down to it, some of us are just made with really low quality batter and when that batter is cooked, nobody feels like eating it.

PART ONE

1.
    I haven’t been in a doctor’s office for nearly 15 years. It’s not that I don’t get ill – quite the contrary. I just avoid the urge to parade my various illnesses and injuries around. When your wage is lacking like mine, bolstering the pockets of some, already overpaid, GP doesn’t sit in my stomach quietly. So I suffer my ailments until they retreat. What can a doctor really do to aide a cold or flu? They excel at giving you easily researched advice before removing valuable money from your malnourished wallet. For these reasons, and so many more, I avoid the doctor.
    And what does it mean to be ill anyway? The body regenerates itself. It’s more resilient than a teenage boy’s wanking hand. The truth is, if it weren’t for the fact so many workplaces require proof of one’s ailments, we wouldn’t waste time going to a doctor at all. I’m the sort of person who goes to work when they’re sick anyway. You know those work colleagues who cough up wads of phlegm onto their computer screens just before asking you to come over and double check some sales figures? That’s me. I’m the guy who blows his nose just before shaking your hand. There’s usually a disease infested hanky in my pocket that I utilise regularly. When you hate your job as much as I do, it’s those subtle acts of sabotage that give you reason to continue. If I were being honest, I’m probably more comfortable when I'm sick. It gives my miserableness something to hang on to – it gives me an excuse. Why would I go to a doctor? I’ll leave that task to those I infect. To even consider seeking professional help, I have to be really fucking sick.
    Sometimes, no matter how hard you try and fight it, you can’t stop shitting blood. I did an admirable job of convincing myself the bleeding was a result of some constipation-induced tear. My diet is such that constipation is a regularity. The only time I eat healthy food is when it happens to be included in whatever microwaved monstrosity I happen to be eating for dinner. But time went on, and long after a tear would normally heal itself, the blood was still there, as if my bowels were vomiting beetroot. This went on for weeks and no matter how hard the dreaded ‘C’ word tried forcing its way into my conscious mind, my stubborn self-delusion kept pushing it away. My self-delusion took a real blow when the stomach pains started. It felt as if my organs had found switchblades and had decided to attack my insides. It was a sharp, cutting pain that refused to abate. A month of this was too much for even me to bear, so I took a bite from the bullet and made an appointment to see a doctor.
    The morning of the appointment, I stared hard at the blood-smeared toilet paper and cried like an onion full of eyeballs.

    My inexperience with doctors really slapped me in the face. The waiting room I was in looked like a bunker and smelled sanitised into non-existence. It was the victim of industrial strength