Have thus far resisted the temptation to look at thyroid cancer pages on web, but gave in today. There are some risk factors that I have taken part in, such as having babies and having miscarriages which make me more susceptible. Eating a lot of meat and dairy is another possible risk, seeing as I have been a vegetarian since 11 ( due to awful pre Jamie school dinners putting me off meat, plus the world hunger argument - you know, how you can feed more people on a field of maize than if you fed the maize to the cattle) I feel a little hard done by on that one.

Being in the tallest third of the population, or coming from South Asia also bump you up - nope, not me, but would be intrigued to meet a lady from South Asia who was in the top third of the UK height charts.

Eating plenty of fruit and veg lowers your risk - bah! I eat more fruit and veg than almost everyone I know.

And, to top it all, smoking apparently lowers your risk and I have never so much as lit a cigarette.

So, all of that goes to show that there is nothing 'fair' about this life of ours. If I smoked, ate meat, and did all the other things that are 'bad' for you, who knows - I might not be facing another round of operations and the uncertainty of waiting for x ray results to know that it hasn't spread (now that is VERY unlikely - so if it has, you read it here, I will start smoking a pipe, eating meat and drinking lots of vodka into the bargain).

So here I am, a vegetarian non smoker who exercises more than the prescribed however many times a week, walks and cycles as much as I can and am as much of a drain on the NHS as those chain smoking, junk food eating couch potatoes.

Anyhow, mustn't grumble! Just been to Bitterne for an early evening popcorn run and browse around Sainsburys, meant to be buying myself shoes, but bought H some instead.