Starbucks red cups used to mark the start of the Christmas season, especially as people argued over whether there is too much or not enough Jesus on the design. There would be a touch of glee in people’s eyes as they queued for a Caramel Brulee Latte, a Peppermint Mocha, or other supposedly festive drink.
But, in the 17 years since I last knowingly stepped inside a Starbucks, things have changed a lot. I’m not just talking about how all coffee shop chains now have an annual festive cup design for people to sup their gingerbread flavoured favourites from. I’m also talking about how I now judge that Christmas season is a-coming.
For around a decade, it has begun with me wishing a happy Christmas to someone I know I won’t see again for three months: my consultant neurologist.
Four times a year, I show up at his consultation room and he injects some of my neck muscles with Botox to try and control dystonic tics, and then I go home again.
As I leave the late October/November appointment, I wish him a happy Christmas, and for the past few years, he has refrained from saying it back. Instead, he now makes a comment about how it is getting close to Christmas.
So this year, to save me from tears, I’ve decided that my Christmas season started this week when I was lying inside a big bleepy whirring tube having an MRI scan.
It’s a “bit of fun” I go through approximately every 12 weeks as someone who has incurable bowel cancer. The most recent one should be the last of the year so that Christmas can begin.
The science bit is that the MRI scanner uses a powerful magnet and radio waves to produce detailed cross-sectional images of soft tissues, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels.
The images help my medical team work out whether my tumours have been naughty, and have spread far and wide throughout my body so I might not live to see old acquaintance be forgot at the start of 2026, or whether they’ve been nice.
If they completely disappeared, they would be high on Father Christmas’s nice list, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, the best that I can hope for is for them to have stayed the same size as they were during my previous scan.
I’d also love it if the scan results show that the dead bits of my lungs and kidneys, as recorded in the scan three months ago, haven’t increased in size.
It’s a stressful time waiting for results, especially as no one knows precisely when they will be available. They should be ready in time for my next appointment with my medical team, so if there is bad news, they can come up with a new plan to help me kick cancer in the face.
But when I asked my medical team this week, they unhelpfully said there’s a backlog of scans, so they can’t say for sure if the results will be ready.
One thing’s for sure, though, and that’s the fact that, weirdly, the stress around scans and results makes it much easier to buy Christmas presents.
I used to spend weeks planning the perfect gifts for my family and hours in shops to get precisely the right thing because I always thought I wasn’t good enough and hadn’t achieved anything in my life. In my head, I felt that if I bought them something nice, then they would be a little bit glad about my existence.
I still try to get everyone great gifts, but I think very differently. Now I believe that me still being alive is everyone’s present and if I can top this up with a nice book or a box of Celebrations then everyone’s a winner.
Not every cancer patient has my f***-it attitude during the festive season, and it can be a very tricky time as people compare how life has been this year to before they were ill.
Talking about it can help a lot, so I’m leading the Daily Express’s Cancer Care campaign. We want every cancer patient to have access to mental health support, both during and after treatment.
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
