Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others.

My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland.

It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here,

but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world.

And because the team has such a diverse

range of skills and strengths, we've trained journalists, people who love digging through

archives, we've got drama and even comedy experts. We really can do those stories justice. So if

you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories

from all around the UK.

You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4.

My name is Andrew Schulman. I live in New York City and I'm a professional musician. I'm a classical

guitarist. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given a very, very, very small chance of living.

I had the surgery, and there was one miraculous thing, which was that my surgeon was the only

doctor who thought it was possible that it wasn't cancer and he was right.

It was a kind of inflammation, a kind of situation where every indication was cancer, but it wasn't.

It's something that would have still killed me, probably.

So I had to have the surgery, but it wasn't cancer.

On the three-minute gurney ride from the operating

room to the surgical intensive care unit, I got the other end of the stick, which is that

one in 20,000 people every year who've had surgery, major surgery with one or more big blood transfusions as I had, I had two,

we'll get the wild card of surgery, which is for reasons not involving any mistake being made,

they will still go into anaphylactic shock, and in most cases the person dies. And in the final minute of the three-minute

...