h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a very odd feeling is not dying, and I somehow think it's going to take a bit of getting used to.

Admittedly, the immediacy of it all had rather been blunted by now. After all, after seven years you do start to wonder slightly impatiently if something wouldn't have happened by now if it were going to. Although the game of 'does this new ache mean it's beginning at last' is going to be a hard habit to overcome.

I should perhaps explain that you are not a raging hypochondriac at this point. *Considers* Well, not a total raging hypochondriac. The reason you are not dying is because the Lump has turned out to be benign.

It has to be said that you have been living with this possibility for a month - the doctors taking the view, you gather, that otherwise you would, in fact, be dead by now. But there's some thing about having ultrasounds and a bloody great needle stuck in your neck and wiggled around that is not reasuring, although it's nice to know that the joi de vive (however the hell that's spelt) the doctor exibited over my samples was possibly not because of some kind of morbid ghoulishness. Since it's turned out to be benign.

Superb.

And they're going to take it out. Isn't that nice. You were particularly impressed by the fact that they kept calling you a young woman and are therefore planning the less intrusive (less scarring) entry technique. The doctor kept saying you might have another thirty years. Thirty years. Think of that.

You might have to give up smoking, even.

must be a huge relief!

*grins* it is, rather!