The Ghosts in the Room

Whenever I diagnose cancer, I see a litany of ghosts in the room. Some of them are still on this mortal plane, but the echo of their memory, their spiritual form at the crossroads of life, appears before me.

The ghost of my brother in his 30s.
The ghost of my father in his 40s.
The ghost of my mother in her 40s.
The ghost of both my grandfathers.

The ghost of the first cancer I diagnosed as a GP.
The ghost of my first patient who died from cancer, five years on from her diagnosis, one I made because something was off about her reflux and I just couldn’t shake it.

It’s so close to home, as you would have gathered.

I live at peace with these ghosts. They haunt me only with the beauty of compassion and lessons learnt. Empathy and condolences, shared experience to a degree, and above all a reminder that to age is an honour. What a privilege it is.

I work in a private billing practice, but I bulk bill anyone with a cancer. I can’t bring myself to charge them. Or perhaps my otherworldly collective conscience reminds me to have compassion and patience above pay.

I wish it were simple, to see all these ghosts in the room. It is heavy, to see them all in the room, adding another to their midst. A new ghost.

But there will not be a séance or a sage-ing any time soon.