Faith, hope and party

WAYHEY it's Saturday and I'm feeling good because I have a party to go to. My friend Michael had bought a new flat and to celebrate, he decided to hold a flat-warming do. Although my friends go out every weekend, I tend to stay in. I'm not a big drinker, that's one of the side effects of having cancer, but for a special occasion like this, I decided to make an effort especially as Mike is such a good friend, always on the phone asking how I am.

And as always for a host, he was just a bit nervous before the party. He found himself worried about whether his friends would mix or not. You have friends from school, friends from university and friends from work. Michael is a hotshot lawyer. He works long, long hours reading over boring documents, but then I suppose that is why he can afford such a lovely flat. Now, I could have crashed at a friend's but I decided to check into a newly refurbished hotel near Michael's flat. It was not too expensive, well-run and clean. As I have probably mentioned before, I love staying in hotels. There is something satisfying about walking around in your underpants without having to worry about someone bursting in. The best thing about hotels, for me, is being able to watch TV from the bath. Langs in Glasgow lets you do this but I've decided it's time to check out a few more to get the TV-from-the-bath perspective.

I am no longer tied to the house for my medication because I am quite adept at giving myself an injection of painkilling drugs. To facilitate a relatively pain-free injection, it helps if you have some body fat. This is because you can pinch the skin and the needle enters the body swiftly and unobtrusively. Unfortunately I am down to nine stone - great for showing off my body tone, but not so good for injecting into.

Although I can inject, I tend to ask my mother to do it. She just goes ahead and does it telling me to swear out loud if the pain gets too much. It must be hard for her to hurt her son, but the pain I have to suffer from my disease is pretty bad just now so please, God, excuse me for the odd word in vain. And while I'm on the topic of God, when you have a terminal disease you tend to examine your own mortality a lot more. I read an article recently, Live forever, which examined the fountain-of-youth argument about cloning and cell replication. I have no proof of course, but I bet somewhere in a laboratory, scientists have already cloned a human being. Whether it is government-sanctioned or illegally in a private-owned laboratory, you can bet a cloned person exists. They managed to clone a sheep without any difficulties, so why not a person?

If you think about it, once cloning has become acceptable, you could be cured of any ailment by replacing faulty organs with an exact clone and go on and live a healthy life. But then how would we value life? Would it negate religion and our value systems?

I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. It was ingrained in me. I went to a Catholic primary school and to Mass every Sunday with my grandmother before passing the entrance exams to St Aloysius in Glasgow. But by then, I was missing Mass and had begun to doubt my religion. How can you reconcile Darwin's theory of evolution with the story of Adam and Eve? And why was there so much pain and suffering in the world? Why did God allow it? I think it was the Live Aid event, and the pictures of all the starving, suffering children, skin draped over their bones, too tired to flick the flies off their bodies that pushed me over the edge. How could I believe in a God who allowed so much suffering and death? I stopped going to Mass and in our religious classes, I was always a dissenting voice, always questioning the priest's absolute faith. I passed through my teens and twenties a non-believer, although if anyone asked I would say I was a Christian, because I lived a Christian life.

And then cancer happened. I was hospitalised for more than a month, and every day my Aunt Therese, a faithful Catholic, would pop in. Her faith gave me strength. She also introduced me to her young priest. He was young, handsome and with time to listen to everyone. We had a lot of conversations about God, with me playing the sceptic, but with patience, humour and understanding I gradually came around to the fringes of Catholicism again. My problem was seeing everything as black or white, whereas life, as I now see it is grey in colour. Life is what you make of it, and despite being dealt a dodgy hand, I tend to make the best of itu You can email Jonathan at Deadherald@aol.com

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