Career worries

Hi Raveen,

I saw your post had not had a response and so I wanted to offer a small reply. I was 36 on diagnosis so quite a bit older than you but I was partway through a promotion process I had been working on for several years when I was diagnosed, so I understand a little about the impact of cancer on careers.

I think the best advice I can give you is to try to park those worries about your career for the time being. You have a more immediate focus in the short term and that is getting your health back to where you would like it to be. In terms of a career, I always thought that there was a correct path that I should follow, that life would turn out a certain way, but truth be told, none of that is really in our control. Each individual is on their own unique path and our job is just to try to find the happiness on that path.

For what it is worth, I took a couple of years to get better and then re-started my career where I had left it. Cancer did not have any long-term implication on my ability to build a career and I was free to re-focus on it as I saw fit. I decided however that I didn’t really want the promotion I had so longed for and there were more important things for me to focus on in my life. As I’ve got older, I’ve also realised that a career is a long time (40 plus years). There isn’t as much rush as I thought there was in my 20s and 30s. I’ve tried now to accept my path for what it is and to find the joy and fulfilment in it, which definitely still exists, even if it’s not quite what I had originally imagined.

Im hoping this helps in some small way.

Greg

Hi,

I'm so sorry to hear about your relapse. I can only imagine how hard that is.

I probably won't be very good with advice but I'm 20 so a similarish age. I was diagnosed last week with Hodgkin's lymphoma and I have a lot of worries about how it will effect my career and my future. I was supposed to be finishing my degree this year and starting a job but now unable to. So you're definitely not alone with feeling worried about your future! I don't know if you feel like this but it feels like when you get a diagnosis your life definitely hits pause and you're not sure how it will ever get going again.

I guess the thing that helps me is reading people's stories about how they moved on to be able to have jobs. There's some on the Lymphoma Action website as well as here. Although some people say they had to refocus and choose a different path, it's reassuring to know that you can recover and you can keep going. Health is always really important first but it doesn't mean you won't be able to thrive. 

Hope everything goes well for you.

Best wishes,

Lily