My belly has stopped moving in and out whenever I breathe. The flesh surrounding my misshapen navel is vacuuming inwards, unable to be separated from the intestines behind it; and they are stuck together like the inlet of a balloon that got damp before it could be inflated, pulled by the tumour that is still growing in my kidney. As I look at myself in the mirror, leaning forward with my hands on the sink to gain a fuller breath, I wonder how this could ever be reversed.

The first comment he makes to me, this eminent consultant surgeon, “We will have to remove your entire upper left quadrant,” I agree to with a strange alacrity. The only interjection I make, as he goes on to enumerate the implicated organs, is to ask: “But how will I eat without a stomach?” My kidney, my spleen, my stomach, bits of my pancreas and bowel are on the consent form he gives me to sign at the end of the consultation. I understand that they may all be removed if necessary, although they won’t know until they open me up.

I never before appreciated the extent to which cancer takes someone over. Not only do you have to endure the disease’s physical assault, but you also rapidly find yourself resisting a social tendency to reduce your identity to the one dimension of someone who has cancer; suddenly being a father, a writer, a lover of dogs and second hand shops is of less currency; and any emotion you express is linked back by others to one of the recognised phases of coping as described in Macmillan handbooks. This social phenomenon happens so quickly, in tandem with the weight loss, and I soon avoid visiting the second hand shops because I don’t know what size trousers will fit me tomorrow, and I can’t visualise myself at all in the future.