Hello fellow travellers.

Awaiting diagnosis is a surreal time. My life is headed to a destination I can't see. It's as though I'm on a boat that is being pulled suddenly in a new direction. I don't know if there is a storm beyond the horizon or just... more ocean. When you don't know where you are going, you are lost.

I have been waiting nearly three weeks since the thing in my chest was discovered. The phone call was brief, the doctor was vague, something about a germ cell in my chest. The call was over before any questions could occur to me. I searched the internet for answers. "Tumor"... "Chemotherapy"... "Cancer"... and then I felt the tug of the boat.

That day we had planned to visit the Natural History Museum; a perfectly sunny Thursday. We were not about to let it go to waste. The cheerful demeanour of the lady at the door, the old bones and taxidermy birds, the high walls drenched in white sunshine giving way to dark dead things in glass cases... the thing in my chest.

I kept the news between myself and my partner for some days. What good would it do to tell the others? My brother has a BBQ planned this weekend. My dad is having problems at work. When left alone I'd pace the floor of my apartment, stopping only to look out the windows at either side. A man walks by with his dog. Across the street, the children are playing. I pace to the other side. The sky is blue, just like it was yesterday.

Powerless, utterly powerless and afraid. I'm on the floor now, I was half way through hanging up the washing. There are wet socks on the floor, I'm clenching a t-shirt and I hear myself make sounds I've never heard before. My neighbour is listening to music downstairs. I want to scream. I want to stop the man I see smoking on the street - "Don't you know? Don't you know?"

Instead, there is only panic. Quiet panic. Quiet panic as I board the bus. Quiet panic as I peruse the shelves in Holland & Barrett. Quiet panic as I move between the people in the streets.

And so the days pass. I tell my family, and a few close friends. The burden seems lighter now I have shared it with others. And somehow that normality, the usualness of life pulls me back in. We watch a movie, we play video games, we go for long walks and talk about life. Sometimes we even speak of the future in hushed tones, as though we are hoping it doesn't hear us talking behind it's back.

The friends who said they'd ask after me every day missed a day, and the next. The renewed interest in bringing me back to God has again faded in my father. I'm not bitter; I almost forgot this morning too.

But still I feel it, the darkness in glass cases. A ringing in my ear. The tick of the clock. The sadness in her eyes. The hushed tones. The quiet panic. The tug of the boat. The thing in my chest.