Life without Parole: Letters from Prison: Alban
Dear Alban , I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner. Four weeks ago they moved me from prison to palliative care, though I don’t know if anyone reported it—I haven’t been following the news. The doctors confirmed stage IV pancreatic cancer. They don’t think I have more than a few weeks left. For months I dismissed the dull ache in my belly and back as prison life—the cold, the hard bed, the terrible food. I blamed the weight loss on the same. By the time they finally diagnosed me, the cancer had spread everywhere. Pancreatic tumours are insidious that way; they hide until it’s too late. The classic signs—tummy pain, back pain, unexplained weight loss—I had them all, but I simply mistook for the symptoms of being an old man in a cage. This letter has been months in the making, and most of it wasn’t written by my hand. The squiggly parts are mine. Everything else comes through a volunteer here who has become my scribe and, on difficult days, even helps organise my thoughts. Pick...
