Colm Tóibín never planned to write a single sentence about his cancer diagnosis. 

In a writing career that has spanned decades, the famed author has jotted millions of words into beautifully crafted sentences. 

But the thought of writing about his own struggles with testicular cancer was something he felt a strong aversion to. 

“For once I was going to go quiet on something,” he told The Hard Shoulder. 

That was until one day he was walking down the street and the perfect sentence came to him. 

“Just for no reason it came into my head… ‘It all started with my balls.’

“And once I got that sentence, I went home and I wrote it down. Having written that down I thought, ‘I better go on to tell the whole story basically from beginning to end.’” 

Mr Tóibín can now divide his life into two periods; the first bit when he lived in “stereo” with two balls and now the second “mono” period when he only has one. 

He has written about it all in his new book A Guest At The Feast, in which he ponders as well on how much he dislikes describing cancer patients as ‘battling’ against a malevolent disease. 

“Battle suggests you’re somehow - ‘I’m going to defeat this cancer,’” he said. 

“It’s not like that; the doctors are battling, the kitchen staff are doing a lot of work, the nurse - you’ve no idea! An oncology nurse has to know so much.” 

His health is much improved but his medical history means doctors now summon him back to the hospital for regular checkups. 

“I’m good, I’m fine,” he said. 

“Every six months you go back in and oddly enough… you back and some of the nurses are still there, it’s great to see them and also it’s great for them to see someone at least with a smile on his face. 

“They put you into a tunnel and it’s a scan and they check your insides.”

Main image: Colm Tóibín.