Flying back to Canada after a lonesome house hunting trip in Provence, I scored the holy grail of airline travel on the Toronto-to-Vancouver portion: my own pod. On all previous flights, I jealously coveted an angled, self-contained and private mini-bunk, and sneered at the self-satisfied elite-status pod travellers arranging blankets and slippers as I trudged past them to cattle class at the plane’s tail. But there I was in business class with the flying rock stars, and I prepared myself for a movie, a cocktail, and the most comfortable nap offered by the airline industry.

The guy in the pod behind me had other ideas. It would be grossly understated to call what he had a ‘cough,’ since it was as close to a cough as the sound of a golf cart is to the roar at the Indy 500. He started hacking while looking for his seat, and continued for hours. I think flight attendants should have the authority to sedate anyone in this much agony (I mean me). I half-expected him to cough up an internal organ before we reached Vancouver. None of my fellow podders were doing any napping either, and we had to content ourselves with sharing the cougher’s swirling death-cocktail of airborne germs, recycled in our pressurized cabin.

Happy to be back in Vancouver, I forgot all about my coughing co-passenger. I was only three months away from moving to France, so I had a few details to clean up. I felt I was on top of my relocation to-do list until I experienced sharp pains in my chest while waiting at my daughter’s clarinet lesson. Chest pain for a guy in his fifties is never welcome, so Carol and I had a sombre ride to the hospital. After several hours of waiting and EKGs and more waiting, I was relieved to hear that I didn’t have a heart attack, but only a muscle inflammation in my chest. A common occurrence. Crisis averted, until the next day, when I was besieged by excruciating headaches looking for a new word to describe pain each time I coughed, which was often and violent. After a week of drugs and misdiagnosis by two doctors, I was back in the hospital, waiting for hours for the results of my CT scan. My phone had run out of juice, I had forgotten to bring a book, and the most recent waiting room magazine was a 1982 Good Housekeeping, “your essential source of foolproof recipes, fabulous fashion and beauty tips, and gorgeous looks for your home.” I was alone and bored out of my mind, but progressed to freaked-outedness when the Emergency Room doctor came to discuss the results at one in the morning.

“We see a large mass on your left lung, so we’ll have to wait until our pulmonologist has a chance to look at it,” the doctor said stonily.

“What is it,” I asked, sounding much more brave than I was.

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied.

“Is it cancer?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

This was not the most reassuring conversation I had ever had with a doctor. The next two hours, waiting alone for the lung specialist, was fraught with worry. But I wasn’t worried that I was going to die. That never crossed my mind; I know intellectually that one day I will certainly die, as I know that some day I will have to give up snowboarding or playing hockey. But not now, not for a long time, as I still imagine myself as youthful and indestructible. No, I was worried that whatever was on my lung, cancer or some other nasty thing, would prevent me from moving to France in three months. In my mind, whatever I had would be operated on and I would recover, but I’d heard that cancer and surgery have a way of delaying one’s plans. What if my operation was set for the same day we were to fly? What if I was too sick to leave the country? Would I be able to pass the medical exam required for my French visa? I fretted about the house lease I had signed in Aix-en-Provence and the deposit which likely wasn’t refundable. I had also rented out my Vancouver house, enrolled the kids in school in France, given my clients away, and paid for a family bike tour in France and Switzerland. I was emotionally, professionally, and financially committed to moving to Europe, and it would be the ultimate piss-off if cancer postponed my trip.

I was relieved when the lung doctor said I had double pneumonia (with a recovery time of only two months). Remembering my coughing co-passenger, I was disappointed that I could no longer mock the tourists wearing surgical masks in airports.