I love this comic, but I sort of wish I hadn't read this...

The comic-writer's wife has had (been treated for) cancer. This is the comic I just found... So accurate!

http://xkcd.com/931/

Figures for tonsil cancer are generally considered to be a 50% chance of survival > 5 years. That's not a very happy thought. On a big plus side, those figures are now quite old, and treatment has improved. So I could say 50% survive > 10 years; or maybe 75%> 5 years; or both, of course; and I may or may not be in the 50%, or the 75%, and that's the real buggery bit this comic says, of course. You live, as my doctor so depressingly put it, with a sword of Damocles hanging over you. You just do.

So, thinking all that stuff, why aren't I throwing up my humdrum life and going off round the world, breeding cats, writing my great novel, using the money I have to live for what may be my last few years to the absolute full? Above all, why the hell am I living a life that I really do not enjoy?

Paradoxically, it's because I'm scared about life if I do survive, and am scared by life now. I don't think I used to be scared of anything really,  but now, I am, and that scareyness has made me stop taking any chances or stepping out at all. I want to live old, and I want to get really good treatment for whatever ailments I may have when I'm old, and I want to be able to live comfortably, and I don't want to be poor. So, I am putting up with constant pissed-offedness and frustration now, in the hope I'll be able to afford to live in not total penury when I'm old and alone (because, remember, I have no children to care for me in my old age).

No, OK, I don't approve either. But it doesn't half knock you for six, takes your feet out from under you, and that at an age where many people are finding life and ageing a challenge anyway. I'm really very very lacking in confidence.

I am still hoping to gain... a sense of self-worth through my work. I am used to being appreciated, I am used to being a star, one of the best; and I am actually really stubbornly sticking with what I have now, because I want to be acknowledged, I want them to promote me. I want to be a success. Then I won't mind leaving!

Plus, of course, there is just not much choice round here. I feel so trapped.