One late afternoon in April, through the walls of my little isolation chamber, I learned that the PET scan that will help stage my lymphoma would be delayed - there was something wrong with the scanner, and they would have to turn the whole thing off and on again. By this point, I was convinced they had forgotten me, as it had been more than an hour since I received my shot of radioactive tracers, but they eventually…
The first thing that people say not to do when you're diagnosed with cancer (or any disease, really) is to GOOGLE IT. I on the other hand, would rather know the worst possible outcome, and work my way backwards - a twisted way to manage expectations, I suppose. Obviously this approach is not advisable for everyone, but I'm a firm believer that it's important to make informed decisions, especially when it comes to matters…
I'm not a stranger to this disease. I lost my dad at 14 to pancreatic cancer and remember how he insisted on keeping it a secret - from friends, family, colleagues - until he started losing his thick, dark hair to the chemo and it became apparent something was wrong. My mum, his sole carer and sole bearer of this terrible secret, endured months in long-suffering silence.
Exactly 14 years later, having to break the…
In a perverse way, finally having a diagnosis came with it a sense of relief. The constant waiting, multiple referrals, and not knowing was frustrating to say the least. Now that it has a name, we can start dealing with it.
