Julian Barnes

It was nearly six years ago.

It was when, just as they were locking down for COVID, first month or two of the year.

Yes, it came as a great shock.

It's a form of blood cancer which is quite rare.

I don't boast about that.

It just means it's hard to diagnose.

Well, there are about 500 cases a year in Britain of this sort of cancer.

So, yeah, I feel... Well, you can't feel proud of an illness, but I feel it's slightly different.

And they pick it up when you have a blood test for something else.

And so I had a routine blood test, and then my doctor called me up

about two mornings later and says, we haven't had your full results, but I want you to go straight to accident and emergency and tell them you've got a very high potassium reading.

So I went off and took various provisions from chocolate to cryptic crossword and so on.

And it took a while for them to find out exactly what it was.

They thought it was something of the nature of leukemia.

But it turned out to be, fortunately not leukemia, but a sort of...

Well, it's not curable and there's no research into this form of cancer.

So I'm stuck with taking chemo every day for the rest of my life.

Pills, yes, yes.

One gram a day and then an extra half gram at weekends just to up the fun.

And there's a 5% chance it might mutate into something like leukemia, but it's essentially stable.