'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

A Close Run Thing

Much too close for comfort, I was in serious danger of growing old, growing old before I needed to. It was a tough fight, and though the war goes on, a small battle has been won, but it was a close run thing.

About nine months ago, I had an operation to remove a cancerous tumour on my colon. This was followed by six months of chemotherapy, which left me so that I needed to lie down after any activity such as say, going to the supermarket and with a numb, tingling sensation in my fingertips and toes. This tingling still persists although I think it has diminished slightly.

During this chemo treatment, I made an effort to go to the gym, but it proved too much over the last month or so. Although there is a slight feeling of nausea, I had to keep eating to combat the poison that they were pumping into my body. Because of the eating and the operation, which slashed open my stomach, bunching up my stomach muscles like two halves of a sliced elastic strap, my waist expanded by a good three or four inches.

I suddenly had to catch my breath when I walked upstairs, couldn’t easily pick something off the floor or tie my shoelaces, couldn’t run across the road for fear of tripping or spraining an ankle. I looked in the mirror and saw the puffy face of a jowly old codger. If I was on a bus or a train, a young girl might get up and give me her seat!

I got an all clear from the Docs after scans and mini cams up my innards. They had more tests that they wanted to run, but I took off for warmer climes at the speed of light, to a beach I could run on and a sea I could swim in. Every day I went out to heave my carcass across the sand, groaning and wheezing with the effort. Every day I splashed up and down the shoreline, pulling and kicking myself along, and every day came the push-ups, sit-ups, crouches, stretches, until a month had past. My joints and muscles ached and I was still as fat and past my sell-buy date as ever. It was no good, I was an old cucker and that was that.

Something still made me get out on the beach every morning. I told myself that I’d just walk about a bit, but when I was there, I had to see if I could run as far as I’d ran the day before. Sometimes I could and sometimes I couldn’t and sometimes I even ran just that little bit further.

Well, you’ve guessed it. In another month the mirror started to look a little more like the old ‘me’, and the aches and pains were not so severe. I’m not as svelte as I should be, but I can get into some of my old trousers again, and the young girls have a slightly more guarded look in their eye.

I see these dear old folk, creaking their way up the promenade or sitting on the seaside benches and think to myself, ‘Yes I was in a whisker of being there with you. But I’m not. Not yet awhile.

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