It was very much like a number of ultrasound scans which I have attended over the years except this time it was me on the bed and the thing being scanned did not have arms and legs.

As it happened it was, from my point of view, rather boring. The scanologist spent a while looking around and taking measurements. The GP had sent me here because she was not sure whether the lump in question was a hernia - or something else.

The scan must have been seen by, or shown to, someone straight away because I was on my way back to work when I received a phone call asking whether I had ever had skin cancer of any type or perhaps a mole removed in the past. I said no. I was concerned by this phone call, having obviously been through every possible combination of scenarios in my mind. However at this early stage it was still easy to put it all to one side.

This thing had yet to arrive at centre stage.

It did step out from behind the curtains a couple of days later though when I had a phone call from Nikki. She said the GP had tried to call me but hadn’t got through and so she had called her. The message was - the lump is not a hernia.

Upon hearing those words I felt an immediate jolt , and a weight came down inside me. I think I knew, at that point, that this was all going to get a lot more serious but still I did not address it - not consciously anyway.

The obvious question was “Well what is it then?”