Excerpt from A Love Affair With Cancer
"A hidden veil of unanswered questions pestered my subconscious mind every hour of every day. Self-posed questions of mortality and survival, emotions so diverse and unknown to my immature mind they caused my whole body to tingle with fear. My tentative optimism cast aside and replaced by indecision and doubt. Where was my support, who, if anyone can help when I was living with a cancer diagnosis? I awoke each morning and went to bed every night with my unwanted accomplice, fearful of the permanent psychological damage that the disease was causing. Aside from the mental distress, the chemotherapy had already inflicted its pain and indiscriminate harm on my physical being and which my fragile frame was struggling to tolerate. I had already endured many months of the unforgiving ravages of chemotherapy and now I am told that my cancer has not been halted despite all of that ferocious treatment that I had endured for almost a twelve months. During chemotherapy, I had struggled both mentally and physically to deal with the persistent barrage of side effects and my inability to accept the uncertainty that is a cancer diagnosis. The issue that all cancer patients harbour in the remote depths of their minds, the time we all fear had arrived, I was ready to submit and accept the consequences of a body gripped by cancer and which was unwilling to release its deathly hold. I knew what the outcome of my actions would be, yet rather strangely I was relieved at having mustered the courage to make that choice. It wasn’t just the physical destruction caused by a cancer diagnosis that I objected to, it was the fact that it was eating into my very soul, sowing seeds of doubt within my mind, interfering with every element of my very existence. Slowly but surely, it was leaving a permanent and an unseen reminder, a hidden scar and a legacy, which, if I were fortunate enough to survive, would last forever."
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