This morning, I’m off for my routine, ‘watchful waiting’ annual appointment with oncology.

I’m wearing my prettiest bra (and all my bras are pretty) and my bravest knickers. (They match.) Also, the dinky purple boots that make me walk like a film star, and the subconscious cardigan. (Other things between,too,  but they are less noteworthy.)

I have my notebook with my list of questions. (1. Mammogram. 2. Genetics. 3. Teeth.)

I have knitting for the waiting and plans for the afternoon.

I have got over the bit where Alan came in to the bedroom to find me wrapped in a towel saying ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital so I’m not getting dressed.’ (That was when I decided it was a day for the brave knickers.)

All of which goes to show that, once you’ve had a dance with cancer, there’s no such thing as a routine oncology appointment.

(Not that I think there will be any sort of Bad News, you understand. I am confidently cancer-free. But just the thought of sitting in an oncology waiting room again is enough to make my heart and guts remember how it was. Once more I want to reach back through the years, and hold my own hand, and say: all will be well, remember, all will be well. And, when I think back to those less-routine days, I wonder whether, somehow, I did.)

See you later.