This Post Isn't Light-Hearted

I've been wondering whether to post this, but I have to.

Spare a thought today for my darling friend and his family. He is in Guy's Hospital having a rib and a chunk of lung removed. He has lung cancer, though he gave up smoking a good few years ago. He is a lovely man and so crucial to his wife and daughters. I've seen them a few times in the last few weeks and watched him sinking into a morphine haze, the thing you don't think about with cancer till you see it close up, is that it hurts. A lot.

I know that any coping I have to do is nothing compared to their coping, but I don't think I've made a great fist of it. Mainly I have just twittered about trying to make him laugh, how crap of me when laughing hurts so much. I've also tried to find ways to help that haven't been covered by anyone else: I'll lend my ipod, I'll drive them to London, I'll give him a sitting-down job when he comes out of hospital.

Quite often in the course of an evening I'll drink too much and sometimes when I do I'll break out into unexplained sobbing before going to bed. Last night I drank too much and did the sobbing but this time it wasn't unexplained.

I know some of you know him, so shall we resort to the superstitious nonsense that is the last resort of the atheist and just wish him well together? Even if you don't know him, you'd be better off if you did, so wish him well too.