wild-eyed boy from freecloud

I suppose that I am approaching an age where this will be increasingly happening? I got a text last night from a friend, saying that he'd not been in touch for a while because he has been in hospital. Before you go "Hang on, I though you said you don't have any friends?". Well, that is true... except for C. This friend, L, is someone whom I have never met, but have been emailing, texting, phoning (OK, only phoned 3 times) for the nearly 3 years. We met on the Internet, in an online community which we belonged (past tense) to.

L is male, 52yo, very social, lives with his girlfriend (year or two younger than me). She is beautiful, and a lovely person. L is very wealthy, and has all the boy toys: boat, light plane, several cars, racing type thingy car. He's a smart bloke who has wangled a very nice venture capital deal for a software company which I've watched him start over the last couple of years. He is also morbidly obese. I add that bit because it is significant to the point of this post (which I am deliberately delaying, because I want to provide some perspective first).

Despite not having met L, I know him very well indeed. And likewise he knows me very well. He is the only person whom I've thought about giving the URL of this weblog to. No-one I know has been given it. As far as I'm aware, no-one I know knows it exists. [Can I please ask that if someone I do know does read it, please don't tell me? Knowing that someone-I-know reads it would really fuck with my head.] Because I've not met him I've been more candid about my issues than I have with any person-whom-I-have-met, aside from C. He's one of those people whose offers of support don't sound like platitudes. And my God, he has watched me go through 2 more years of dramas than I have recorded here. So, clearly he is a saint wrt tolerance.

You can feel what is coming, can't you? Yep, he is in hospital awaiting test results. He had a haemorrhage earlier in the week, and has had 6 weeks of odd symptoms prior to that. Through a series of texts exchanged I've found out that he has several lesions on his pancreas and liver. The results he is waiting for are testing for malignancy. He finds out the results this week. He's confided that it doesn't look good.