"It is cancer!" - from Lindy

I loved reading the pudding blogs. I’ll have to think about another recipe favourite of Ben’s. I think the guys who have lived with him might say Spaghetti Carbonara. I bet that has loads of variations!

I read in one of Chris’s latest blogs that it was about one year ago that Ben told us ‘I’ve got cancer’. I’d like to say (with humility of course) that Chris wasn’t even in the country when Ben announced it!

I never heard Ben say ‘I’ve got cancer’ in the early days of his diagnosis. He told me ‘It's cancer’ and I said ‘You told me a few days ago that it might be cancer.’ And he said ‘It is. It's cancer.’ I believe that he didn’t think ‘he had cancer’. Like the rest of us, he believed that the lump on his leg was cancerous.

It was also about a year ago when he was at a holiday house with friends for the mid-year Uni. break, that a good mate arrived after most of them were already there. He entered the holiday house in his jocular manner, greeting everyone and saying loudly to Ben;

‘Hey Ben! Hey; how’s that purulent, pussy, cancerous looking sore of yours?’ And Ben responded instantly with a quiet ‘It is cancer!’

I can’t repeat what the poor mate said in return ‘*&*%’ but he was loudly very upset. This mate and his wife were two of the most supportive and empathetic of his friends throughout the next five months of challenge.

It still feels like it could have been yesterday and all we have to do is reach out and grab him back. On the other hand it seems like forever since we’ve seen him.

We’re so glad so many of you still remember him and care too.