Sure, they’ll tell you all the medical facts, and textbook encouragement that comes with being a general practitioner.  “Curable” is a term they’ll drop in from time to time.  “Positive thinking” will be another.  They’ll ask if you know what Hodgkin’s is, and you’ll nod your head, still lost in a sentence already passed.  
 

Commit to memory a human body stripped of skin, its torso exposing muscle structure and internal organs; medical certificates in gold plated frames; inoculation reminders for flu, diphtheria and typhoid.  You need to remember anything that gives the illusion of reassurance.  Anything to help you believe the words leaving their mouth will help in some way.  But they won’t.  Nothing will.  
 

Between a blood pressure monitor and otoscope sits a family portrait captured in black and white that looks more like a GAP advertisement.  Your doctor will be dressed in what looks to be a cream v-neck sweater and canvas khaki trousers, his wife in a cream dress, his kids, miniature versions of the same outfits.  Everyone is smiling, and everyone has great teeth.  They’ll all be a million miles from you at this point.

The doctor will break momentarily from his speech about white cell counts and some other shit you’ll have no idea about, to reiterate the point of being “Positive”. 

Behind a thousand-yard stare, you’ll hear none of this.  In truth, you’re not really there: you’re in a car driving along the coast: you’re making love beside a babbling brook: you’re having your picture taken with your kids.  You’re dressed in a cream v-neck sweater and khaki trousers.   
 

Before you know it, everything slows down.  Life, I mean.   

Travelling on a bus, gazing past the grime on the windows, past the magic marker drawing of a penis that looks more like the Apollo 13 rocket, everything loses speed: a brunette applying lipstick in her rear-view mirror, construction workers digging up the pavement, a child having its face wiped by its mother.   

You’ll notice more, and care less.   

Curable is the one thing you try to take back with you.  Positive thinking is another.  But it’ll be difficult to think of anything other than funeral arrangements.  This you’ll picture in the greatest of detail: bright yellow flowers spelling out your name, a horse drawn carriage, mahogany coffin, black figures consoling each other, the ghastly weather. 

Choosing hymns and your three favourite songs of all time is much harder than you first expected.  The songs you pick will need to reflect the type of person you are…

Sorry, the person you were. 

They’ll need to be poignant, but not too depressing, inspiring, but not too clichéd.  You’ll want a heart-rending melody that will provoke tears, but not too many.  These songs will have to remind everyone attending of you, and no one else.  This means no movie soundtracks.  Your family and friends shouldn’t be thinking of a famous actor and actress on a pottery wheel while you lie only ten feet away pumped full of Formaldehyde and cotton wadding.     

At home nothing changes but you.   
 

Close to your home there’s a big old church made of limestone.  It stands on a large hill overlooking the neighbourhood, like the biggest guilt trip there is.  Sometimes you’ll be sure you can see its silhouette through the bedroom curtains on a full moon: its spire and cross forming an emaciated Jesus effigy judging you on your nocturnal activities. 

In light of certain events, you’ll find yourself envious of that church.

You’ll ask the vicar about the church’s history, and he’ll tell you, while chomping on a blueberry muffin, a man named Herbert J Connelly built it in the nineteenth century.  Each sand-coloured rock was shipped over from Ireland by boat, and then carried by horse to the hill.  It took four years to build and has stood for well over two hundred years.  It has seen two world wars, four recessions, fifty seven prime ministers, seventy three thousand sunrises, and about ten and a half thousand Christenings. 

The vicar wipes his mouth only to tell you, “If that’s not enough, the church will see more than you and I will ever know”.

Outside you’ll brush your hand over one of the rough limestone blocks and think, Lucky bastard.  

In the hospital you’re directed to what looks like a massage bed with extra wide toilet paper covering the place where your head should be.  You’ll be told to sit and wait. 

In this room there will be nothing more than a freestanding glass trolley with small black caster wheels and weighing machine.  The weighing machine will be the kind with the two silver dorsal fins that need to be placed evenly apart to attain the correct weight of someone.  On top of the glass trolley will be a kidney shaped bowel, some medium size white boxes, and swab packets – everything will be numbered.   

You’ll sit and wait. 

Outside you’ll hear a Tannoy system tell a Dr Griffith to report to Paediatrics.  Inside the beat of your heart gathers a rate of knots.  There’s nothing on the walls but a long strip of laminated paper divided in increments of five inches all the way to eight foot, and a watercolour painting of a sunset that never really existed.  Next to this painting is a door.  But not the door you entered in.  It’ll be a different door.

The room will have that disinfected smell that’ll remind you blood has been spilled in there on many occasions.  This will not reassure you, or slow down your heart. 

Curable, you’ll keep telling yourself. 

The surgical consultant will enter through the door next to the painting.  He’ll be old, but not old enough you don’t trust his judgment - just old enough to make you thankful.

In his hands, hands so clean you know they’ve been places you will never even see, is a brown office folder.  He’ll ask your name, age and how long it’s been since first feeling the lump.  Three questions you’ll need to expect.  Hodgkin’s predominately affects adults (men in particular) between the ages of twenty to forty.  If you’re twenty-five with an inflamed lymph node situated in your neck, and a recent drop in weight, he’ll put you in the bracket, high risk. 

He’ll ask you if you know about Hodgkin’s, and you’ll tell him through a broken voice it’s a curable cancer.  To which he’ll finish, “Only if caught early enough”. 

How you end up naked except for a floral blue gown as thin as bible pages is the end result of following a set of instructions.

You’ll be told to go down the hall towards A & E, and then left at neurology.  Follow neurology until you get to E.N.T.  At E.N.T you’ll have to go right to cardiology, then turn right again toward maternity, but don’t go to maternity, go left up to radiology, it’s there you’ll be given instructions to change your attire.

You’ll feel like a foreign exchange student on the first day of school, wandering around open corridors with a piece of paper to hand to the receptionist.  Nobody will help you because they’re dealing with really sick people, people who are really dying.  You’re walking.  In everyone else’s eyes this will make you, low risk. 

Take a deep breath, the radiologist will tell you.  Hold it.   

With your lungs forcing your chest towards the cold glass plate with the little cross projected on it, you’ll think of nothing other than funeral songs.  A short list of possibilities, ones you think will be appropriate will be playing in your head.  You’ll run through the melody, through the lyrics twice the normal speed to make sure there is no reference to Lucifer, to being a Jew-hating Nazi, to being an atheist, loving your dog too much, or loving your mother too much.  Christ, the last thing you want people to think about when you’re six feet under is incest.

Half way through the final verse, a staccato of ear-piercing bangs will bring you back to that plate and its cross.   

The radiologist tells you to breathe again. 

You’ll take a coffee from the vending machine, and a small foil wrapped chocolate bar from the one next to it, and you’ll wait with everyone else.  People coughing into their mouth will make you think of tuberculosis.  People squinting to read the magazines left on the tables: Glaucoma.

While sipping coffee you wonder who will read your eulogy.  It will have to be a friend, your closest, and definitely not the priest.  You’ll remember other funerals, other eulogies and who said them.  You remember a funny anecdote of a long forgotten uncle.  Then you’ll spend the rest of the time in that waiting room wondering if anyone will remember you doing something funny. 

The consultant will walk back into the room with the weighing machine, the trolley, the measuring stick, and he’ll have your X-rays in his nice clean hands.  He’ll first take a quick look by holding them towards the only window in the room.  You’ll notice a small beige mole on the back of his neck and you’ll think: Melanoma.   

He’ll then take the X-rays over to a wall-mounted white box with a light inside.  A flick of a switch and what looks like two pale clouds surrounded by darker clouds surrounded by smaller greyer clouds fill your chest.  In this picture, it’ll seem like there’s a storm brewing in your upper torso.

Thirty seconds will seem like an hour in situations such as these.  You’ll become more aware of the temperature in the room, in particular the heat bleeding through the window causing your armpits to itch with sweat.  You’ll notice every time the consultant shifts his weight from one foot to the other, a scratch of chin follows it.  This you’ll interpret to mean something bad.  Because of this, you shift over slightly on the massage bed to make more room for your suspicion.  

He’ll pay too much attention to the small cloud close to the centre of your chest.  His tiny eyes trying to focus on something there, but can’t quite seem to decipher what it is.  That’ll be when he turns to face you.  And for the second time that day you’ll hold your breath. 

When you breathe again, it’s over.

Craig Wallwork is 33 and lives in Manchester, UK. During the day he works as a corporate editor (roughly translated: he edits training videos that you will never see, and if you do, you'll pay no attention to).