Author's Note
This chapter is more or less an introduction to John's cancer and basically the background leading up to the next chapters.
My description of the cancer may not be correct so don't take my word for it, though I did do some research before barrelling on and writing it. ^^'
Any comments would be appreciated, as always.
Cheers.

edit: I changed the ending ever so slightly.
It wasn't flowing properly.


Cancer - The one word that had been the chorus to both John and Sherlock's life for the past year or so. How one small and seemingly insignificant thing could spread to be the killer that it was now was... mind-blowing.

It had all started roughly two years ago. It had been mild and inconspicuous, at first; a mole that had appeared on John's left outer thigh. He'd paid it little attention back then. In fact, he'd mistaken it to be a freckle and had dismissed it completely. But when he first noticed its change in shape and the itchiness and irritation, the doctor in him knew he'd have to get it checked out. Without mentioning a word to Sherlock, of course; despite the man's general lack of interest in most things that weren't himself and his experiments, John knew that Sherlock would have pestered him about it for days on end and, unlike most people, Sherlock didn't tire easily when it came to annoying people.

The appointment with the doctor – Dr. Williams his name had been – had gone relatively smoothly. Well, at least it had from where John had sat, listening to everything Williams said with rose-tinted glasses. They'd taken a few tests as well as blood and skin samples from around the mole, with the doctor saying that he would get in touch with John in a few days with the results and that had been that. However, when he'd returned to 221B to the sound of Sherlock screeching away painfully on his violin in the front room, he'd started to feel a little nervous and twitchy, barely being able to stand Sherlock's violin 'playing' before he'd huffed off to his room.

Sherlock had likely noticed that something was nibbling away at John for the few days that followed the doctor's appointment, asking the shorter man if everything was alright pretty much every time the two were in the same room together... which was a lot when you lived in a relatively cosy flat like they did. Of course, John had batted away all of the man's fussing with ease. If only he could have ignored his own nerves with as much simplicity.

And then there had been the phone call. Fortunately, Sherlock had disappeared off somewhere at the time – they'd recently solved a case and Sherlock had likely run off to gloat to Lestrade and show off about everything he knew in good old Holmes fashion – and so when Dr. Williams had requested that John book an immediate appointment for that day to discuss the test results, the man had gotten even more worried. He'd hurried down to the doctor's surgery and had to endure around about half an hour of the doctor telling him he had skin cancer – 'non-melanoma' as the doctor had called it.
"But fortunately we've caught it at an early stage," the doctor had told him, "and, if we start with immediate treatment and removal of the mole, it should hopefully prevent it from spreading."

It had sounded so hopeful back then. After John had been referred to a specialist – a Dr. Murkowski – the treatment had been quick, the mole having been removed within the three weeks after the doctor's appointment. What was better was that John had somehow managed to hide all of this from Sherlock's view. How, exactly, he wasn't sure. Sherlock had been seemingly distracted by other things throughout the period that John had been visiting the doctor and, since the man never queried where John disappeared to – if he even noticed his disappearances – John never brought it up.

Things had been fine for a few months after that. The small scar on John's thigh from the removal of the mole had pretty much disappeared and he'd begun to push all of that behind him; things had gone back to complete normality. That was until he started to get pains in the same area as where the mole had once been. As before, they'd been bearable pains, easy to dismiss. But as he and Sherlock continued to venture out on cases, John found running after the man as they scoured the streets of London becoming increasingly difficult, not to mention painful. On many occasions, John had backed out of helping Sherlock chase down a drugs smuggler or the culprit behind a murder charge purely because he couldn't.

It had been horrid, and not just because of the pain; not being able to participate in cases as fully as he wanted to and watching Sherlock dance about 221B as he droned on about his lack of cases, or John's lack of support, had caused him more pain. What was worse, he'd started using his walking stick again. At the sight of that, it was Sherlock's turn to get concerned, and when he got concerned, he did in vibrant colours, banners and interpretive dances – meaning he wouldn't shut up about it till John was practically carried into the doctor's surgery over Sherlock's shoulder. Literally.

And it all went downhill from there.

The next few weeks had been filled with tests, x-rays, tests and more tests, over which time John had come to notice the lump that had begun to form just above the scar left behind after the removal of his mole. Sherlock had started to step further and further away from his cases and experiments to go with John to his doctor's appointment and their normalcy was abruptly ended after what must have been their sixth appointment with the doctor. "I'm afraid it's Ewing's Sarcoma," Dr. Grantham – a specialist, apparently – had explained, "a cancer commonly found near or in the bone. It is likely that the removal of the cancerous mole on your thigh was not entirely successful and the cancer has spread to your bone..."

Upon the hearing of the cancerous mole, Sherlock had pretty much exploded on both John and the doctor, demanding that either one of them explained themselves before he called the husband of the doctor's secretary to tell him that she was sleeping with her boss.

John had heard of the cancer before, knowing it to be one of the most common types of bone cancer, but that hadn't offered him much in the way of reassurance. After having explained to a livid Sherlock about John's earlier mild case of skin cancer, Grantham had then gone on to explain treatment and so on and so forth. Though, throughout most of the discussion, John hadn't been listening. He could hardly believe that this was happening to him. He had cancer. Cancer. He was almost taunting himself by repeating it to himself.

John had fleeted in and out of the conversation as the doctor explained that they would need to do further x-rays to see the rate of the tumour's growth and that they would then discuss treatment from there. Sherlock had interjected occasionally with tight-lipped remarks. In fact, his parting words with the doctor were that he was 'an utterly useless imbecile that had failed in his role as a doctor'. That was the 'clean' version.

The x-rays had shown that the cancer had, indeed, spread to two other locations; his left hip and knee. The tumour on his thigh had grown in size and, despite the other tumours being smaller, they were all massing directly on his bones, which was the reason behind his inability to walk anywhere without experiencing pain. The doctor had decided to use a dose of both chemotherapy, which would serve to shrink the tumours, and palliative radiotherapy, which would ease the pain that the tumours were causing though it would not rid him of them. The only thing that could be done at that point was to shrink the tumours and then remove them before they could spread further... but the doctor's prognosis was generally a bleak one. Apparently there was a 80 per cent chance that the tumours would come back after removal, something that didn't inspire a huge amount of hope but what else did John have to grasp hold of other than the fact he might be part of that lucky 20 per cent? It wasn't just John in this, however; Sherlock was holding this hope just as tightly. Everyone was.

And so treatment had begun. John now had to take more pills than he could count each day and was going once per week for doctor's appointments and trips to the radiotherapist. Nothing had been quite right at 221B after that. Of course, Mrs Hudson had flapped like a fish out of water when she heard the news, breaking down into tears and hugging John till he was fairly certain she had shrunk his jumper with her tears. She was the first person to breech the normality that John was used to. The next one was Harriet who, upon hearing the news, had driven straight down to London to see him, appearing on 221B's doorstep unannounced. She had made herself quite at home there for a few days, doing some shopping for them and generally helping John out for a bit, before Sherlock had eventually managed to usher her out after numerous inquiries of her drinking habits.

At first, it was apparent that Sherlock had opted to ignore John's cancer. John had been perfectly fine with that. Sherlock had continued to take cases, conduct experiments and play his violin at four in the morning.

However, as time had spiralled on and a month had passed and John could assist him less and less, the strain started to show on them both. As much as Sherlock hated to admit it, working alone felt wrong. John had always been his counterpart, the person he could bounce his thoughts at, his cipher.

But at the news that the radiotherapy and chemotherapy weren't having any affect and the cancer was beginning to spread to other parts of John's body, Sherlock's act had begun to crumble noticeably. John had begun to struggle a great deal on getting up the stairs in their flat and, on numerous occasions, Sherlock had found himself almost practically carrying the man up them much to John's evident dismay considering the short man tended to hit Sherlock repeatedly with his walking stick till the man put him down.

As a side-effect of the radiation therapy, John's hair had begun to thin and fall out and he'd started to obtain a large amount of burns and sores on his left thigh, making any movement incredibly uncomfortable and painful for him. As if the pain in his bones weren't enough.

Over time, Sherlock dedicated most of his time experimenting on ingenuous – well, he called them ingenuous anyway – ways to help John get around easier. He kept saying how they needed to invest in equipment to enable him to move around better when 'the going gets tough'. This had ranged from the suggestion of a stair lift – to which John had instantly shot down – to Sherlock placing a baby monitor in John's room to 'keep an eye on him'. "It's an ingenuous idea, John," he'd said – that bloody word – but resigning himself to stair lifts... John wasn't quite that far enough along yet for that.

Quite frankly, Sherlock's obsession with trying to make things easier for John had only served to give him the goose bumps – the man had become even more of a hawk than he normally was; a change he had tried to hide at the beginning but gave up on as time went on. Though, alongside the heebie-jeebies, Sherlock never failed to amuse him. It was obvious in the way that he spoke, asking how John was feeling, that he wasn't used to such interaction, but John would be forever in his debt for trying. Sherlock hadn't found it funny – or at least he pretended not to, though John was certain he'd seen the man's lips twitch in an attempt to keep a straight face whenever John commended his 'new and improved' caring attitude.

The one steady thing in his life had been Sherlock. Where other people came and went, Sherlock remained. When people let him down or 'had other plans', Sherlock was always there to pick up the pieces and help him through it. Even before the cancer had been declared officially, the infuriating smart-arse of a consulting detective was always there when he needed him.

If one person could keep his spirits high in a time like this it was Sherlock.