Update?

"So," said Dave, "How's me dad?"

"Well," said Dave's mum....

Dave's dad had always had a thing for having a somewhat pessimistic view when it came to his personal health. For example, on one occassion when he discovered his hands had turned a slightly blue colour he immediately assumed he was about to die. Dave's mum had pointed out that it was dye from his gloves and therefore not all that lethal.

With this in mind, Dave could only begin to imagine what his dad had thought when they sat him in a chair and said, "Mr Natsios, the check we are about to do to discover what the growth is will involve us going up the urethra and scratching a small piece off for testing. You will be awake throughout the entire thing and if it goes wrong, which is unlikely, your urethra could swell up and you will be unable to use it and you will need to be hooked up to a bag."

Dave's dad left the hospital without having the check.

After a few days and a few chats with Dave's mum, he finally had the courage to go back and have the check. However the hospital had other ideas. He was placed directly into a cancer ward and was about to be given an operation to remove the growth without bothering to discover how serious it was. "If this goes wrong, which is unlikely, you may end up in a wheelchair..."

Dave's dad left the hospital again without having anything done. The current situation was, despite the trips to the hospital, nothing further was known and nothing further had been done.

... "and then, as your dad was leaving the hospital, the doctor said to him, I can see your not ready Mr Natsios, but please come back soon, I don't want my patient to die."

Dave took the news, or lack of news, rather well. He would hopefully find out more soon, but for now there was nothing much to worry about.

The next morning Dave woke up in a flood of tears, but, on the bright side, it got him out of bed before 10am on a saturday, which was almost unheard of.

"He's going to be fine," said Jean,

"He's going to be fine."

MyHeritage.com

Dave had discovered a great new game. MyHeritage.com. Basically, it's a website on which you up load pictures of yourself, friends and family. The site then uses state of the art techniques to decide which 10 celebrities the person in the picture looks most like.

When you think about it, that's pretty damn clever.

To Dave's horror his photo had a 50% match to Justin Timberlake, the celebrity certain people had tried to convince Dave he looked like, which Dave had always found to be nonsense. He apparently also had a 55% match to Sean Hayes, the really gay friend of Will in Will and Grace.

To Dave's amusement, other peoples photos had had some fairly interesting results....

Jean: 56% match to Joseph E. Stiglitz (guy going bald with a beard)
Dave's mum: 53% match to Uri Geller, 50% match to David Schwimmer (Ross from friends)
Dave's dad: 55% match to Whoopi Goldberg, 55% match to the Dalai Lama and 52% match to the Prince of Wales. (How is it even slightly possible for anyone to get that combination?)
Alan: 66% match to Isabella Rossellini
Andrea: 70% match to Madonna, 68% match to Wentworth Miller (guy from Prisonbreak)
Steven: 72% match to Meg Ryan, 63% match to Audrey Tautou and actually 9 of 10 of his matches were women.
Peter: 48% match to Christina Aguilera
Emma: 70% match to Katie Holmes
Anya: 55% match to Naomi Campbell

Aline: 71% match to Britney Spears
Macca: 70% match to Sarah Jessica Parker (the main one from Sex in the City). As with Ste, 9 out of 10 of these matches were women.

‘So’, thought Dave, ‘If I look like Justin Timberlake, I’m taking everyone else down with me.’

Context

"Growth"

What do you think of when you hear the word "Growth"?

The evironmentalist may think of new forests and plant life.
The parent may think of how quickly there little ones seem to shoot up.
The pyscologist may think of an individual's maturity.
The builder may think of expanding cities and highways.
The Head of Tesco may think of world domination.

Unfortanetly, when Dave heard the word recently he didn't have the luxory of any of these interpretations.

"Dave," said his mum, "Your dad's had his tests, they found a growth on his bladder..."

Dave didn't know what to think. He knew what he most certainly did NOT want to think of, but that was the thing that kept coming to him anyway.

The doctors didn't know what it was yet. They would do some more tests. There was a wide range of possiblities with an equally wide range of how serious it could be.

For now, Dave could only hope, prayer and say, "It's bound to be nothing".