Reality bites back

So I've not been here, lately, I've been off writing, and writing a lot. Studying, I even managed to take a weekend off to Edinburgh with Mrs Moghal to celebrate our 8th anniversary - a week after the event, but it coincided with a Bank Holiday weekend, so we could make a long weekend without dipping too far into my holiday allotment.

Just before that, though, Mrs Moghal pointed out a little odd-shaped mole on my back. Fair enough, it's happened before - go see the GP, he says it's probably nothing to worry about, but he'll excise it and then it gets sent for a biopsy and you don't hear again. It takes about three weeks, usually.

So I go on a Tuesday evening, figuring I'm off to Edinburgh at the weekend, and I'll get back to find an appointment on the doormat. Wednesday morning they phone with a Friday appointment with a dermatologist...

Now, anyone who knows the NHS knows that you don't get appointments that quick. Ever. So I turn up on the Friday, and an admittedly very nice woman took a look at my mole, and then had her nurse prep me and hoiked it out. Nothing to worry about, but this time I don't just have to wait and if I don't hear anything it's fine. This time I have to go back in three weeks for the results...

But don't worry.

Right! Don't worry! Surely not. Three weeks. I've got assignments I'm supposed to be working on, an end of year project, work, kids, reconstructing a kitchen, selling a house... Worry, I thought, was a fairly standard state of affairs.

Now I've elevated it to a new level, and I know I shouldn't, but there you go. I can't write, I know my work's been suffering. I can't even sit comfortably with seven bloody stitches gaping in my back.

So... I wait. And, worse, Mrs Moghal has to wait, too. Like having two disabled parents and two disabled children isn't enough for her, she has to face this, too. And she's trying to talk to me, I know she is - 'are you OK?' every twenty minutes - but I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget about it, pretend it isn't happening, do a Schroedinger's cat with it until I know, one way or the other. I can deal with it, if it's there. I can, obviously, deal with it if it isn't.

But this three weeks of limbo is as bad as I can imagine it being. It's the strangest thing to feel that there might be some sort of sadistic relief in hearing "... I'm afraid I've got some bad news."