Finally, since they still couldn't tell whether I had cancer, I was to have the lump removed. I would then know, after eight years, whether I had cancer again. I would rather not use the word "remission", which implies you're going to fall under the axe eventually.My friend and neighbour in the flat below had offered to look after my dog and me on the day of my general anaesthetic. All these tests, plus the waiting periods in between each, took five months. I'd had a mammogram, then an ultrasound, then a fine needle aspiration (where a needle is inserted into the lump, to draw out fluid or cells), then a core biopsy Nothing definitive was shown.

I imagined it would be like the Bergman film The Seventh Seal, in which Death appears in a hood. That would be it. Last November, after eight years of being "clear" apart from a scare two years ago, a small lump had been detected by a doctor. Like everyone who's had cancer, I'd always dreaded a recurrence. I'd had a stiff arm and shoulder - still have - probably because of not doing enough arm exercises as taught by the hospital - and, to cap it all, two months after chemotherapy a horse trod on my foot, making me lame. In 1991, I'd had the works, except a mastectomy. I'd had a lumpectomy, all my lymph glands removed, and, after breast cancer was diagnosed, six weeks of radiotherapy and six months of chemotherapy.

At the time Mr Milburn made his announcement there were already three inquiries under way into the same issue. What can a fourth add - other than salve for the pain?On Monday the High Court began hearing evidence about the amount of damages to be paid to Patricia Briody, who was left childless and wombless after a medical blunder She is seeking the cost of a surrogate birth. Despite winning her case for negligence against St Helen's and Knowsley Health Authority after an 11-year legal battle, she has still had no apology.What to make of these events? That somewhere along the line, the NHS lost the capacity to say sorry Today, that failing is costing it dear.. Parents whose children died after hospital treatment have found themselves having to reopen their graves to bury organs they never knew had been taken from them. It was a medical horror story of sufficient emotional power to prompt the Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, to order an independent inquiry.Here, too, the inquiry's function will be partly, if not wholly, therapeutic. They are wrestling with unresolved emotions, unable to bring their grieving to a conclusion, and one unacknowledged function of the inquiry is to aid the healing process.

Doctors, we know, bury their mistakes - they do not often weep publicly over them.At Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool there was more grieving. "This is the first time in two years I have been able to speak to an audience."For hundreds of parents caught up in the tragedy, too, it was the first time they had had a genuine, public apology. First there were the remarkable scenes at the public inquiry into the Bristol baby deaths disaster, when Janardan Dhasmana, one of the surgeons at the centre of the case, wept as he apologised to bereaved parents. "I wish I had not operated on those children," he said. HEALTH IS conspicuous by its absence - we notice it only when we haven't got it. Sickness is therefore linked with loss, loss invokes grief and grief is something the NHS is singularly poor at dealing with We've had three graphic examples of this within a week. At this stage, the best the surgery can offer is probably just light and dark perception."But Harold Churchey is prepared to take his chances: "The next time the hospital calls me for another test, I'll be ready."Call the Royal National Institute for the Blind on 0345 669999 or visit the Johns Hopkins University website: www.irp.jhu.edu.