Towards the middle or end of 2020 we discovered that I had a malignant tumour in my right kidney. After much back and forth and testing, scanning and consultation with various experts, I was called in to the Laiko General, an excellent public teaching hospital to have my kidney removed.

Finally on the 7th of April 2021 after one failed attempt to remove it laparoscopically, I was operated on in the traditional scalpel method. This took place during the pandemic and half the Urology surgical ward was given over to quarantine for Covid patients. The staff in pre and post op were stretched to breaking point. Yet the standard of care was amazing, given that the entire urology ward was basically staffed by two nurses, heroic in their care and attention to each patient.

The post op biopsy showed that the entire tumour had been excised and that there was no need for further therapy. This was a happy situation.

Almost two years later, one of the mandatory six monthly follow up CT/MRI scans showed a tiny growth in the muscles where the kidney had been removed. This led to renewed fears that perhaps the cancer was back, an unusual thing in kidney cancers. The discovery in turn lead to another round of six monthly scans and tests which ended in the last set of CT scans and blood tests, PSAs and ultrasounds in April 2026.

On12th May I was asked to go back into the hospital for a consult and final check up with my surgeons’ assistant. This was a happy culmination to six years of stress and medical procedures, when I was told that I was cleared and there was no need for further tests, apart from the normal periodic prostate tests which plague men over a certain age.

Here is a small selection of my clandestine photographs in the waiting area of the Laiko Urology Surgical Ward, where I had had my operation originally.

I am posting this as introduction to a larger article I’m preparing as homage and celebration or diary of my extensive and somewhat traumatic medical odyssey for the last six years or so, with all the stress, uncertainty and frankly fear that cancer carries with it. In some ways the psychological damage of cancer, if you recover from it, is worse somehow than the disease.

Anyway here’s the first small gallery. I shot this using the DSLR balanced on my leg, and guessing at the framing, since I really needed to make it look as though I was just fiddling with the camera. The last ten in the set are taken on my Motorola phone. It always blows my mind that in many places they have strict no photography rules. Yet if you use your phone no one objects!