The Unwelcome Guest

By nature, I normally combine brutal confidence with a sunny disposition and a relatively good perception of my strengths and faults. As the French say, I’m comfortable in my skin. (Though they generally say it in French)

Recently that confidence seems to have taken a hit and initially I blamed the Unwelcome Guest.

When people learn you’ve got cancer, they immediately think you’re going to die and even if you’re not headed straight to the departure lounge, they tend to assume you spend all your time thinking about your mortality or lack of it.

Cancer changes people’s perception. Someone once said we all carry three words in our head to describe people we know. Whatever those three words are when people think of me, I’m pretty sure one of them is now cancer. I suspect this leads some to think I’m diminished in some way and unlikely to perform my job as effectively or be a generally high-functioning member of society. Cancer also coshes humour, stuffs it in a burlap sack and throws it overboard.

I’ve been too blessed in my life ever to be a victim and I’ll be damned if cancer is going to make me one now, but dealing with cancer is odd for those who’ve contracted it and for those who come into contact with it who are mostly thinking, thank God it’s not me. Cancer can be like water on limestone, a slow drip-drip of confidence erosion.

Part of my job is to get on my hind legs and talk to groups of people who then benefit from my enormous wisdom. Lucky sods. Unlike Mrs Preen who hates giving talks, I quite like it. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m a bit of a show-off.

Part of my cancer treatment is getting quarterly hormone shots which gives me a small insight as to what menopausal women have to endure. In short, I get hot flushes, flashes and sweats. A week or so after my first shot I was at a meeting at the Natural History Museum when suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m in a muck sweat. High temperatures seem to trigger these events and the summer is definitely worse but whatever the ambient temperature, I start leaking at least five times a day.

This is uncomfortable, unpleasant, but as I’ve said elsewhere if this is what it takes to boot out the Unwelcome Guest then so be it. No sweat you might say, but it’s not so great when it happens when giving a presentation to clients. Suddenly I’m melting in front of their eyes and I can see it’s as uncomfortable for them as it is for me. They’re thinking Jim’s either as nervous as a first date or having a heart attack, whatever their thoughts, dripping sweat from the eyebrows is not a great look.

On a more banal level, I’m also a bit Mutt & Jeff – too much loud rock & roll from a young age is the culprit there. Being hard of hearing also tends to sap one’s confidence, as if you don’t catch what people say, you just appear thick.

Don’t get me wrong this loss of confidence is by no means terminal and most days I’m just as arrogant, self-assured and opinionated as ever, but it does tend to gnaw.

As much as I’d like to blame the Unwelcome Guest for this intermittent confidence outage it might be as much about old age as cancer. I hit 65 this year, which in a peculiar way I’m quite looking forward to. My last socially significant birthday was 21 and that’s 44 years ago. Here comes retirement age, though I have absolutely no intention of retiring as I’ve always associated retirement with death. My Dad retired at 60 and was dead in eighteen months.

I may not be able to run as fast as I could, getting up from kneeling down requires a herculean effort and my prostate is shot, but I’m taking comfort in the words of PJ O’ Rourke: ‘Age and guile beat youth, innocence, and a bad haircut.’