Chocolate mousse and cancer

OK this post isn't going to be a total downer but here's the thing. When you consider the statistics it must work out that we all know someone who has had cancer, might have it, or is being treated for it. In fact we all probably know several such people. But it so seldom is the case that people tell you that they are one of them. Maybe they don't want to talk about it, or maybe it is that the Big C still conjurs up such frightful thoughts that nobody wants to go there, either on their behalves or for anyone else. Well I am coming out of the closet because I am one of Those People. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer five years ago, had both my thyroids removed, went on to have radiotherapy to make absolutely sure that no cancer cells had made it into the lymph, was declared cancer free in 08, and ever since then I have trekked to six monthly x rays, blood tests and clinical examinations at University College Hospital. I don't enjoy going. My first two years of appointments induced an unpleasant paranoid fuelled anticipation, which, when I was liberated from it by an all clear, then produced a very scarey bout of retail therapy, ruinous for the bank account when you consider the location of UCH - conveniently close to a million shops on Oxford Street or if furniture is your bent, it's just a few streets up from Heals and Habitat. After a couple of years had gone by, natural human optimism took over and I went to these appointments with calm resignation. Until my most recent check up, which was just a few days ago and prompted this post, my appointments took place in one of the most depressing buildings I have ever had to spend time in, with filthy windows, cramped waiting rooms, and people at all stages of investigation in the one room. I spent my January visit sandwiched between a poor woman who had just been diagnosed with the same aggressive breast cancer that had killed her elder sister, and was being reassured by her shellshocked younger sister; and a young man in a wheelchair with no hair. I felt deeply for both but could not help thinking, look, I have done my time. Can't clinics for post-treatment checks take place at a different time from diagnostics, so that I can be spared the pain of reliving my experience through the trauma of other people? You can see why the whole experience would send me hoofing up Tottenham Court Road in search of the quickest impulse buy. Space NK near Warren Street has been posting handsome profits on my behalf for the last three years. Happily, things have changed. I went for my latest check up this week to the old building only to discover they had moved. To the brand spanking new Macmillan Oncology Centre, a beautiful and fairly intimidating, huge glass structure, with gorgeous men at the entrance there to guide you through the fully automated process of check in. Complementary therapies were available, courtesy of Macmillan, through two huge doors into a space that looked exactly like Champneys, while consultations took place in state of the art medical suites. I plonked myself down on an ergonomic sofa wondering whether I had come for a check up or a job interview. It was quite literally like stepping into the first class lounge at an airport, destination Cancer Country. As anyone who goes for these check ups will tell you, it does not matter whether your cancer is curable or not, whether you have easy treatment or awful treatment, chemo or radio, lose your hair or skip through the whole thing unaffected, there is no leaving Cancer Country. I myself will be going for annual check ups for the rest of my life. So no point in trying to file this away in a box marked Extra Curricular activity. From the moment of diagnosis, living with cancer, or the threat of cancer, becomes an integral part of your life and with limited financial means there is no point in venting the rollercoaster of your feelings on retail therapy - or at least, not after every appointment, if you don't want to be bankrupted. This fabulous new building with its sleek technology, its wifi access, its cafe and its electronic noticeboards which flash up "MELINDA SIMMONS TO ROOM A113" goes a long way towards calming and comforting, and generally restoring the sense of being in control that a threat of a cancer diagnosis generally takes away from you. But my experience of this is that living with the bureaucracy of cancer management needs something in my life to counterbalance it. After this last visit, my response was to haul out the baking goods and find a recipe so complex and so beautiful and delicate that it would take hours to make it, and represent a huge personal triumph once on the plate. Give it up for the Organic Green and Black recipe book and their Marquise au Chocolat, a recipe so complex that three days later I am still trying to figure it out. If I do manage to deliver it looking anything like the picture, I might just pop along to UCH and offer it up to the cafe in the MacMillan Oncology Centre for prize of place.