Will Self

Now, I think I'm probably very easy to live with.

I have so few demands.

I mean, I've serious illness.

And if you are confronted with the possibility of dying and you take it seriously, you don't deny it or elide it into some other project.

It makes your demands on life disappear completely.

I have secondary myelofibrosis, which is a blood cancer.

The problem is it flips to an aggressive form of leukemia, and that's why I was scheduled for the stem cell transplant.

I had it in autumn 2024, so it'll be two years.

Median-term survival is 80% make two years, so I've still got a few months to go, but the signs are pretty good.

It's incalculable, I think.

It's enormous.

I think that it's had an absolutely huge impact on me.

Well, you look on the other side of the room.

One of the problems in my life in recent years has been that I am passionately in love with my wife, and I don't just love her like an old dog, but I am in love with her.

So when I wake up in the morning and I see her face,

next to me, I fall in love again.

And I think she's in the room and she can probably testify to the truth of it.

Does she find that a bit exhausting?

Not in the least.

She's an incurable romantic herself and we find it very hard.