Hi All,

Well it's progressing, first consultation was over the phone, a more detailed run down of the issues, they are going to arrange counselling and there's a waiting list of a few months but I knew that from the outset. I'm not expecting a therapist who specialises in JW issues, I doubt such exist. I was/am concerned that if the therapist has no idea of how mind control cults operate and the effect that has on an individual and the depth to which some of the issues are embedded, then the therapy might not be as effective. I dunno, have never had therapy before so it's all new to me. It's just that the few friends I have opened up to can obviously empathise with the shunning but some of the more deeper stuff just goes over their heads.

Anyway, apart from that life's good.

Cacky I think we're living parallel lives. What with you having your first therapy session around the same time and now your lumpectomy. No, not having one of those but I was having a pick at those tiny white pimples near the outside corner of my eyes that I get from time to time, (other half told me to sort them out), milia, I think they're called, little buggers that you have to winkle out with a pin. (If that's too much info. sorry.) So, whilst looking at my fizzog magnified in the the shaving mirror I noticed this "mole" underneath my left eye that I was sure hadn't always been there. Tiny, only the size of a lentil. I dug out a close up photo taken 18 months prior and no, it wasn't there. Saw the doc, was referred to a dermatogist, had it scraped, cauterised and sample sent for analysis and turns out it was a basal cell carcinoma. Very mild form of cancer, highly unlikely to return, if it does there's a more thorough method of removal (Moh's surgery.) If I hadn't been picking how long before I would have noticed it? Unlike ladies, us blokes tend to just look in the mirror at hair and the beard area when shaving, lines wrinkles and blemishes aren't worth a second look, they will from now on.

Was told it was probably due to over exposure to the sun in my twenties, (the earliest part of of which I bummed around on Cornish beaches all summer with no sunscreen or anything, who bothered in the seventies?) Could also have been 'cos it was so near my eye the times when I have been using sunscreen I've probably avoided that area, won't from now on. Here's to the parallel lives continuing with your lumpectomy, good luck with your recovery.

Alan