Luck and Chance and Death...

You probably think I'm very unlucky to get cancer at 18. This evening has made me able to prove you wrong.

I just spoke to the elderly lady who got my old bed. She has a slightly different sort of cancer to me, it might've been lymphoma or something. Her stomach is so big it looks like she's having quads. We talked about her grankids, my studies, being diagnosed, our illnesses, chemisty, clumsiness, sewing, grannies, teenagers, all the perks of everyday life. There's a one in three chance that she will die.

Today I have been dicing with death. I have leukaemia. I walked out in front of a bus earlier. My tv resides right above my bed, and this afternoon it fell off. If I'd been in my bed at the time it would've done me serious injury. Are these instances of luck or its absence?

Who knows? The only thing I feel certain of is that I am very lucky to have this leukaemia now. That old lady has every chance of dying. She won't be alone, I saw all her family with her today, but those veins of hers won't last much longer.

Then there's me. Dancing with my shopping bags, you can barely tell there's millions of cancer cells gently swimming around my arteries. I'm not denying that death is something that might happen to me somewhat prematurely but if you look at my progress card you see perfection. The Philadelphia Gene just pushes my treatability up more and more. The point is, I'm going to live and this is just a dramatic learning curve.

For that old lady it's the path to her meeting with St Peter.

So... Leukaemia. I'd say I'm quite lucky.