I can’t recall having previously read Colm Tóibín’s 2019 moving account of his testicular cancer. You can also listen to him reading the piece at that link.

The whole essay is quite wonderful, and it feels a bit wrong to pick out specific bits, but on my most recent reading, I was particularly struck by this passage:

In the end I phoned the hospital. The nurse could not have been kinder, but since there was no pain, no precise problem, she did not seem to know what to say. Feeling bad was part of chemo, so the fact that I felt bad was not news. Eventually, I found that I couldn’t explain what I felt and we ended the conversation. A few minutes later, she called back and said I should come over to the hospital and pack some things with a view to staying for a few days.

It made me think firstly about the difficulty of articulation. As humans, how many times have we all thought “there’s just something not quite right”—but been unable to describe, even to ourselves, exactly what is wrong?

And secondly, it took me right to the mind of the nurse. As a doctor, it transported me to all those times when my gut feeling has said something’s wrong, and after a bit of soul-searching, I’ve made a bold decision in response.