Chuck Strahl, Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons has announced he has lung cancer.

The 48 year old has been an MP since 1993.

Some newspaper columns ‘write themselves’. Some of them are written after extensive research, while others are just human interest stories. Often, (for a part time, occasional writer like me) they happen in a fit of emotion- anger or compassion. This one doesn’t seem to fit any of the above, although there are elements of each one in it, I think. This column is about me (always a difficult subject), and it is about my cancer.

I don’t see any other way around this. I’m a kind of private guy in many ways, and I like to be pretty stoic about problems I face day to day. But my job is so public and expectations so obvious that it can’t really be a secret. And perhaps it wouldn’t be fair to be secret anyway, because there are so many people who need to know and want to help out in ways small and large.

I didn’t start the summer with cancer, but I did start with some medical problems that I kept sort of quiet. My lung collapsed at the beginning of July, but I thought it was just the flu or perhaps pneumonia, and I was too busy and too stubborn to rush into the doctor’s office.

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