I woke up on a Friday early in December feeling a little dreamy and only just in touch with reality. A hint of classical music danced at the edges. Very comfy. Writer David Sedaris calls it his happy place: the twilight drugs he remembered from his first colonoscopy. I was there now.

While my colleagues in print and broadcasting were heading to Brisbane for the 2016 Walkley Awards – journalism's night of nights that I had co-hosted for a decade – I was coming round from what I thought was a routine peep into the depths of my bowels.

The gastroenterologist said later he'd found some polyps in my colon and had given them the snip. This in itself was nothing unusual. Let's keep an eye on them, he added, and we'll see you in a year's time.

Only, that's what I was anticipating he was going to say. What he actually said was, "We also found a large tumour." I'm grateful now that I was still in that happy place, because my response was pretty bland. Or perhaps I had just not thought about it enough to panic.