Sweet relief Tuesday I found a small, painless lump in my groin whilst showering. Panic and fear immediately set in. I didn't have a GP so I called the NHS who told me to rush to the clinic in Soho. It's quite embarrassing having to repeat over and over what was found where to various nurses, receptionists, advisors, doctors, etc. I can see why men would be tempted to ignore it, to not have to describe it or think about it or tell a complete stranger that one found a lump when touching one's scrotum. The clinic sent me on to UCL Hospital. I sat fearing I had some sort of cancer. Then wondering how I would deal with cancer. Could I stay in the UK and be treated? Would I have to move back to the US? If they had to remove the testicle, would they replace it with something or just leave an empty space? How would I walk up two flights of stairs with a stitched up groin? How much work would I miss? Who would I call and tell? Who would I ring to visit me in hospital, or bring me a toothbrush, or just be support in a difficult time?

I felt very alone, scared, sad.

The doctor sent me upstairs for an ultrasound. I laid half naked on a bed whilst some doctor squirted cold jelly on my private parts to run a plastic wand all over. I got to watch the ultrasound. The foreign, greyscaled voyage through one's internal parts is quite compelling -- and terrifying. I gulped everytime she stopped to scan a dark spot, or revisited an area of the groin. I stared, wondering if I was watching some form of cancerous tumour in my body, wondering what was normal and what was abnormal.

The good news is that the lump is absoutely benign and commonplace. Embarrassingly, it's a vericose vein. How one gets a vericose vein in that area, I've no idea, but it's common in men of my age. There's nothing to do about it -- it will just come and go for the rest of my life. The NHS were quite good about it, reinforcing that I'd done absoutely the right thing. If it had been cancerous, then earliest treatment is best. My sense of relief was palpable -- it grabbed my body and squeezed hard. I wanted to stand on Tottenham Court Road and have a good cry. I wanted to call and tell everyone I was ok, that I'd had a brush with mortality that had been postponed a while longer.

As quickly as the relief comes, it goes, and life becomes ordinary again. And one has to get up in the morning and fight the Tube and buy a cup of coffee and check their emails and write their presentations and find lunch and answer phone calls and go all the usual things and all the usual crutches and doubts and small satisfactions and life-crap. It was sweet -- and fleeting.