I’m putting on weight! That’s good news. (Cancer update 4 May)

 You work out what’s news by looking at the headlines. ‘Dog bites man’ is not news, ‘Man bites dog’ is. Actually when you think about it that’s wrong, but nevertheless…

So the headline is, ‘Cancer patient puts on weight’. Canadian comic Norm McDonald, who died of bowel cancer, talks with lack of enthusiasm about the book title ‘Lose weight without dieting or exercise!’ As he said, "doesn’t that just leave disease?"

Well yes and I got down to 71k, having lost 4k in the week leading up to that measurement. Now I’m piling the weight back on and I’m up to 76.9 as of today, about six weeks on. How’s that? My ambition is to get as big as those guys who are confined to bed and can’t even get out of their room until the guys with the chainsaws arrive to come through the external wall and broaden the exit path out of the house and into the special crane-equipped ambulance. Let’s see how we go.

So the doctor’s happy, I’m happy, and I will soon book in a PET/CAT head to toe scan to see if my fingernails or any other body parts are starting to grow their own tumours, but the vibe is that it’s all good so far.

Meanwhile, has it occurred to you that the antidote to despondency, over time, is thankfulness to God? Not an immediate cure, that's true, but today I am thanking God for putting on weight. Here is a song about feeling happy in such times.

Here's a particularly good version of the same: