I’m very sorry to go on about this, but my shuddering must be setting off volcanoes in Iceland.

I’m hoping that, by writing and reading and thinking about it that I’ll desensitise myself.  So far, this tack is not working.  But still, there’s a story to be told (and I’m right on Script Frenzy target with 50 pages and I’m procrastinating over starting episode 3).

It’s been reported that a 28-year-old guy in Russia named Artyom had a tree growing inside his lung.  This was good news, considering they thought it was cancer.  Lung cancer is horrific, no question, and please allow me to preface the following rant with me stating emphatically that I certainly do not mean to dilute the seriousness of this disease.  Artyom was relieved to have a cancer-free outcome - just as any of us would be.

However.

IT WAS A TREE.  A fir tree, in case you were wondering.  A TREE!  I can actually feel the blood drain from my face.

To think that it had reached FIVE CENTIMETRES.  It brings tears to my eyes.

Did Artyom keep his mouth open long enough to give it some sunlight?  I suppose if his airways were open long enough for a seed to descend and take root, chances are the sun shone in too at some point.

Did the leaves whistle when he breathed?  Did Artyom emit an alpine-fresh scent, but nobody knew why?  Did his red blood cells decorate it at Christmas time?  Did they still admire it when it was covered in snow?

Are environmentalists going to start suggesting the rest of us follow suit so that we can all start exhaling oxygen instead of CO2?  Neutralise this, b!tche$.

I think the thing I find most disturbing – that is, aside from the fact that IT WAS A TREE - is that you could have something like that going on inside you that you have no idea about.

A doctor once told me you can have a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball and have no idea.  I was 8 years old at the time.  This may go toward explaining why I don’t like surprises.

Indeed, Artyom said “I never felt like I had an alien object inside of me”.  He just got really, really sick for a while.  X-rays showed a hideous tumour.  Surgery showed IT WAS A TREE.

The whole thing is having the ‘teeth effect’ on me.  You know, when they discover ill-fated fetus siblings inside people and it turns out they have fully formed teeth?

And yet, somehow, I’m coping even less with this.  This fir tree didn’t share genes with Artyom, it wasn’t his less fortunate brother, it wasn’t some aspect of the complex formation of a human being gone awry.  No.  IT WAS A TREE.  A TREE!!!  With needles that made the poor guy’s capillaries bleed!  Oh dear God, someone please hold my hand.

I’m hoping – HOPING – that we wake up tomorrow to the news that it’s a hoax.  I’ll curse, I’ll laugh, and I’ll be really bloody relieved.

And I won’t have to wear a mask the next time I go bushwalking.