Stark Bollock Terror

(Republished with permission: cancerouscapers.blogspot.com)

The last few days have unquestionably been the most terrifying of my short yet colourful life so far. On Tuesday morning I was having a shower and whilst cleansing my intimate areas I discovered an ominous lump on my testicle. The left one, to be unnecessarily precise. This is surely enough to make any man curl up into a tiny naked ball and weep uncontrollably, but when that man is already receiving treatment for cancer an immediate suicide presents itself as by far the most attractive of a narrow set of options. However, drowning myself in the shower turned out to be an unrealistic goal. I wouldn’t have the dedication to keep my foot over the plughole for twenty-three hours even at my very lowest ebb.

I don’t know how much cancer research you’ve personally carried out but, as a man in the know, I can tell you that the only treatment available to testicular cancer patients is immediate surgical removal with a giant, rusty sword. Then the bloodied, pulsating testicle is presented in front of your tear-sodden eyes and popped, like a grape, with a knitting needle. I’m not looking forward to it much. Actually, I don’t need to look forward to it at all because I don’t have testicular cancer. It was something unrelated. I just wanted you to experience a tiny portion of the unrelenting panic that I’ve been in for the past two days which, ironically, has probably shortened my life expectancy more than testicular cancer ever could.

The concrete belief that I was not only going to lose one of my testicles but, also, that my cancer was spreading to my various organs gave me a temporary nervous breakdown. Not a proper medical one obviously, I’m not mental, but I ate a massive plate of shortbread at one point. We’re talking almost half of an entire packet, I was pretty low. I also spent an afternoon listening to music with salty tears running down my face trying to decide on a suitable soundtrack for my testicle’s burial. After much deliberation I settled upon ‘Foxy Lady’ by Jimi Hendrix, the anthem of every single one of my seductions, to remind us of the good times. Then after that, for the cancer's family, ‘We’re On The Ball’ by Ant and Dec. That joke took me literally one full hour to think up, but I’m sure you’ll agree that this was fully justified by the results. It can only be described as pun wizardry.

The best pun ever written aside though, it was the first time that all of this has actually scared me. It can attack my lymph nodes all it wants, I don’t even know what they do, but it would cease to be at all funny if it started to pick on my organs. Particularly if those organs were Excalibur or, as I thought this week, the Knights of the Round Table. I’m reliably informed, however, that this is practically impossible during my treatment as they know that it’s working well. I’m shunning migrant cancer cells seeking asylum in the safe haven of my body like an insane nationalist.

This week’s terror has, however, shaken my confidence enough for me to treat every single thing about my person with the utmost suspicion. A spot is now a face tumour, and a cough is one of my lungs falling off. Plus, I’m not getting fat, my man breasts are just two massive growths. I can safely say that it’s nothing to do with the two kilogram bucket of jellybeans that my podgy sausage fingers are nestled into right now which my Dad bought for me. A gift, considering the form of a jellybean, that would have taken on a cruel irony if I had heard there was something terribly wrong with my testicle.

But it was all a fuss over nothing, and gave me something a bit exciting to write about on here. However, I’m quite self-conscious of the fact that three out of seven of these blogs have now focussed on my genitalia. I’m concerned that, rather than becoming an inspirational Lance Armstrong figure, I’m turning into a peddler of sm*t like Jackie Collins. Why couldn’t it have been a nice dignified lump on my chin?

Anyway - another week, another emotionally crippling cancer scare.

P.S. As an extra little segment of my mind, mentioning Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix reminded me of a tip that I have for any young men reading this struggling with the ladies. The line from the song “I want to take you home, I won’t do you no harm” is a chat up line that works one hundred percent of the time. For best results approach her at a moment when she is alone, say it without breaking your intense eye contact and have a big toothy smile on your face.

P.S.S. In my perpetual quest to become the new Lance Armstrong, I looked into the possibility of buying a small number of custom made 'Jamie Ross - Cancer Slayer' wristbands to disperse amongst my friends this week. However, all of the websites have a minimum order requirement of about 250. This would be fine if I was Zack Efron but, at best, I probably know about fifteen people who would be willing to wear one of these. And even they would only do it out of an embarrassed politeness. This would leave me to wake up every morning to the depressing sight of three massive sacks of wristbands that I painstakingly designed myself, with my own name on it. To any visitors I’d look like an egotistical maniac that arrogantly assumed an eighth of the population of Kinross were desperate for a piece of Jamie Ross merchandise.