Update to close friends - waiting for a referral - 15th Feb 2023

Day 15 of admission

Chaps, no major news but a bit of an update for you: Stanmore unlikely to accept me as the issue is too complicated. Whatever I’m dealing with, if it turns out to be malignant they think it could be something quite niche. Royal Marsden have provisionally accepted me, but need to hold a case conference first (taking place Friday). The guy who’s taking lead specialises in retroperitoneal sarcoma (what this would be if it is malignant), and is president of British Sarcoma Group, so quite reassuring. Looks like I’ll be here at least till the weekend/early next week. I’m taking it all as positive news.

Context

I debated whether to put this in. This is a message to my two best mates on a group we've had since university. It's not particularly enlightening or significant, but I think it highlights the different ways in which we speak to people. With Alex and Chris, I was able to be more blunt, direct and pithy than when sending messages to 50+ people. I also felt it important to update friends like those and my Trust Tree almost daily, because I knew if I didn't they would come for it anyway. They were living this experience with me.

Clearly what isn't captured here is the back-and-forth nature of out chat, but as a quick update I think it gets the point across.