Another two years of life

I came home a few days ago after a great lunch with my local girl friends - one of them had just had her 61st birthday, and we were celebrating with presents, pizza, and plenty of white wine. She was five years younger than me, and looking fabulous. I fancied we all did. We certainly looked great in my photos of the occasion.

Golden girls indeed.

I was brought down to earth by an NHS envelope awaiting me, just inside my porch.

I knew what it was. The results of a recent bowel cancer screening.

I sighed. Well, no panic. I'd take my coat off first, and hang it up. Then I'd change my clothes. Then put on the kettle for a nice cup of tea. No hurry.

Only after these things were done did I open the envelope. I was half-expecting bad news. Or at least worrying news, such as 'the latest result was inconclusive, and we'll be sending you another kit'. That happened once before.

Phew. A 'normal' screening result. No bowel cancer then. Not even a request for another screening because of unclear indications. No, I was clear, off the hook. I could have another two years' peace of mind, until the next time.

I don't know why I'd felt seriously concerned. After all, I consumed no manufactured 'ready meals', not even posh ones from a Marks & Spencer Foodhall, or from Waitrose. Certainly not the cheaper but utterly artificial packaged offerings from the mass-market food stores. I ate only home-cooked meals prepared by myself, or in friends' houses - or cooked from scratch by a chef when eating out - made from natural raw ingredients, cooked in healthy ways. As nature intended, you could say. Nothing in them to irritate my digestive tract and make it bleed or turn cancerous. Why had I worried?

The answer is, of course, that at my time of life I constantly feel vulnerable to sudden body part failure. We are all living longer than we used to, and there is more chance that something will wear out, or decide to malfunction.

I can't avoid the various processes of ageing, even if I consciously adopt a healthy eating and exercise regime. Even if I recall that at no point in the past did I stupidly sow a seed of destruction, a little death-worm that would grow and gnaw at me, and one day devour me.

I never habitually drank to excess, never took drugs, never smoked, never subjected my body to physical stresses, nor my mind to mental torture. I must be one of those whose sensible lifestyle choices have greatly improved the odds against dying early, greatly improved the likelihood of living on - with my faculties intact - well into my nineties, or even beyond. For I don't want to be a burden on society. I don't want to neglect or ruin my health, and get so ill and enfeebled that society must look after me. I want to die standing. Or better still, asleep, dreaming sweetly of some exciting holiday yet to come.

Yet each medical test performed risks discovering the possibility of a dread death. So far, the news has always been good. But one day it won't be.

So I sometimes think of the end. The big switch-off, the permanent death of consciousness. And prior to that, the loss of physical capability.

I've already become reconciled to bowing out with much left undone, or never experienced. I think I'm already past the point where things that require great effort might still be attempted. I get tired if I do too much. And in any case need to protect myself from physical stresses. I speak as someone who has never suffered a broken bone, and is very fearful of any life-changing physical injury. So I suppose I must abandon notions of a trip to the moon, or Mars. And I probably shouldn't join a trek to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, nor visit Machu Picchu, just in case altitude sickness kills me.

Never mind. There's still an awful lot that I can do. I just want awful things like cancer to pass me by.

Fingers crossed.