Quite often, my wife will look up from her mobile phone and say to me: “Have a guess what it’s the anniversary of today.”
It’s those cunning people at Facebook, reminding us about a special moment from the past which we captured in pictures.
It won’t be long before they will be prompting us again to buy a photo album off them with some of our best efforts from the current year. I mean something you can hold in your hands; a proper book you can flick backwards and forwards, comparing one shot with another.
It’s funny how we all store hundreds of pictures on our phones or laptops for instant access, yet often forget what we’ve got. It might be a sharp, slick, digital world, but stuff can still gather dust in a corner.
Luckily, Facebook has a better grip on our memories than we have. And being offered a chance to compile and curate them in such an old-fashioned concept as a cardboard and paper album is so appealing. So, we bought two photo albums in a snap.
Usually I’m stumped when my wife puts me on the spot. Then, after she reveals the answer, we smile with the joy of reliving it – and marvel over how many years these personal little anniversaries have clocked up.
It could be a holiday, a meal, or one of our grandchildren’s birthdays. Life slips by with us hardly noticing, doesn’t it?
An anniversary I’ll never forget
However, there’s one anniversary I don’t need reminding about, and only one picture exists to my knowledge to record it.
It shows an ashen-faced man of mature years lying in a hospital bed with about five tubes going in and out of his body. That was me. A few days after my birthday.
I had a rather weak smile on my face, but my thumbs were up; I think they were the only moving parts of my body still working.
It was only a couple of hours after waking from a major operation, and I remember how it took ages, weeks in fact, for any feeling to return to my abdomen, as I’d been pumped full of anaesthetic.
It’s the fifth anniversary of having my cancerous prostate removed. Or, to give the surgical procedure its proper name, a radical prostatectomy. I know all the ins and outs of it, but I still can’t pronounce it properly.
It reminds me of when we studied North America for a whole year in geography at school and, at the end of it, I still couldn’t pronounce the word Ohio.
Get checked, even if you don’t have symptoms
Don’t worry, I did hesitate about going on and on about my cancer experience; wallowing in the misery and relief it brought in equal measure – not to mention the precious extra years of life it bought me.
Yes, I know: I was lucky. There are lots worse off: those who didn’t survive without an early warning like I received, and countless others whose nerves are shredded by NHS delays to scans and other exploratory tests.
I’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for my younger brother in Melbourne. He warned me that he’d been through it: the odds of having prostate cancer go through the roof if brothers start going down with it (all three of us, including his twin, had the same operation in quick succession).
Three brothers, and we can’t boast a single prostate between us. And all relatively young – between 58 and 63 at the time. So, don’t think it’s all about doddery old blokes in their 80s.
I’m a classic case of why men should get checked: it’s when you don’t have warning signs that you might be most in danger.
I thought there was no way I had cancer. I had no symptoms whatsoever; I was as fit as a fiddle – or so I thought. Even MRI scans couldn’t find anything, but a biopsy did.
All clear, but not quite 100%
When I was awoken by gentle prompting of nurses hours after the operation, one told me that was the “easy” bit; recovery was much harder.
The cancer was banished, but I still haven’t fully recovered from the surgical side effects. I can’t complain – the grim alternative was oblivion.
I’ve reached the five-year all-clear, which means I am being passed over from the care of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s wonderful urology department to my own GP.
The NHS focuses more on patients on waiting lists who need help now, not those who came out the other side but will never be 100%
I suppose I should celebrate, but I feel like a chick being shooed away from a cosy nest by the mother bird for its own good. I don’t want to let go.
But they have other priorities, quite rightly. The NHS focuses more on patients on waiting lists who need help now, not those who came out the other side but will never be 100%.
Maybe I expected too much; it was never going to be picture-perfect.
David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal