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And my heart has been touched by the compassion of colleagues and friends. By the e-mails, the cards, the phone calls, the visits, the concern. It tears me apart, still, this love.

Last Wednesday, I lost my chemotherapy virginity. It was taken at 2.15pm at the Oncology Unit of the BRI, with a tiny needle, a drip and the drugs. Having flirted with linctus, codeine and morphine, it was time to court chemo. Sister Sarah did the trick, genius that she is.

It did not hurt and for once, I did not complain. Instead, I asked Gloria what the machine was telling us. She looked up from her magazine and replied: "I'm glad that you can't see what this says." I looked at her, aghast.

"It says, 'Danger, seek medical assistance, fast," she went on, pretending to read the thing. "I'll just finish my magazine and then I'll let them know . . ."

"There it is," he said. "It looks like a butterfly, doesn't it?" An elusive, bastard butterfly, I was forced to admit, adept at hiding from his knife, there in all its unforgiving beauty.

Of late, it has not fluttered its deadly wings, or spread. This could change tomorrow and so, consequently, could I.

But I will not, I think, change my mind, or become angry. My cancer may well be self-inflicted, through a 25-a-day, 30-year smoking kick. This, to me, makes it hard to object when research funds go elsewhere - to children stricken with the invader, who never smoked in their lives, for instance.

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