Note to siblings: I have already alerted you to the main matter of this post.

This Friday, 8 October, I am booked in to have an operation to fix an inguinial hernia. This is quite unrelated to the cancer. I’m not sure how I developed the hernia — possibly through lifting weights that were a bit heavy for me. The weakness in the abdominal wall might have been there for quite a while. Anyway, it’s something that has gradually developed until the time has rolled around to do something about it. It is good to get it dealt with before it develops into something more serious, i.e. incarceration or strangulation, as set out in this Healthline article.

Naturally I checked with my oncologist before booking the surgery. He strongly encouraged me to have it. He said (words to this effect) “You’re very fit, you’ll breeze through it”. Having the hernia fixed will allow me to continue exercising, something of great importance to cancer patients (as for everyone). I sought a few other opinions as well, about the surgeon, and the technique he proposes to use. All these came back favourably as well. So I am as confident as I can be that the outcome will be positive.

After the open radical prostatectomy, this should be much less of a production. Having had the former operation unfortunately rules out keyhole surgery in this case. Hernias are still much easier to get at than prostates, lymph nodes, etc. I am scheduled to have the operation on Friday morning, and be in hospital overnight. I will have to take my music player in! I will also take in something a bit lighter to read than what I chose for the prostatectomy — Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstedter. (It’s not every book that gets its own Wikipedia entry. Who was I trying to impress? Needless to say, three years later, including six months in lockdown, I still haven’t read it.)

Another unexpected development has occurred, this one associated with my foray into the German language. My patient and good-humoured teacher Jörg told me on Friday that he now has a full-time job, starting in the middle of the month. He and I will finish up the two lessons remaining in the current block of ten. After that I will have to either find another teacher, or join a class. I am leaning towards the latter of these options, if I can find a class that is at about my level, and at a convenient time. (I was planning to have a break for a week or so in any case with the operation.) Of course I am happy for Jörg that he has a better position. I have come to look forward to the lessons, though, and it is a little sad that they will not be continuing after the next couple. We have developed something of a rapport, even after I corrected one of his corrections — something he took in good spirit! (As Mime says to Siegfried, in the opera of that name, “den Lehrer sein Knabe lehrt” — literally, “the teacher learns from the lad”.)