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."