ABSTRACT
When Mr Helmy came to my bedside about a week or two after the operation to tell me that the biopsy had revealed the tumour to be malignant (i.e. cancerous), I didn’t believe him. It was partly his dispassionate delivery, I’m sure, at which my current self isn’t at all surprised or disappointed – he is a surgeon after all, and must have to break this kind of news regularly. It was partly, though, that I was under the illusion that I was an “outlier” who had survived against all the odds and was getting better faster than anyone previously or currently in my position. I thought I had heard the nurses talking outside my bay about this and actually using the word “outlier”.
