You wonder, 'How could it possibly be me?' Well, of course it could happen to you. You have it. Then, of course, you wake up every morning, and you hope it's a bad dream. Then you wake up. I have cancer.
I'm sorry to say cancer can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person.
When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.
Cancer is something that can happen to anyone, like a sportsperson who is eating right and doing his bit correctly. Cancer really takes your life away.
Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence, but because it is felt to be obscene - in the original meaning of that word: ill-omened, abominable, repugnant to the senses.
We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own.
The only reason to have a positive mental attitude is that it makes life better. It doesn't cure cancer.
Despite the fact that one in every two men and one in every three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, no one ever expects it to happen to them. I surely didn't. I was an otherwise healthy 37-year-old when I was diagnosed in 1996 with multiple myeloma, the same rare cancer Tom Brokaw has.
I didn't believe when I was first told that I have cancer. I thought, 'How can a young person like me get cancer?' I thought it could never happen to me. It took me a while to realise that I was diagnosed with cancer.
We all live with cancer, whether it is present in ourselves or affects someone we love.
People's view of cancer will change when they have their own relationship with cancer, which everyone will, at some point.
We think till the last minute that nothing can happen to us. But cancer will grab you by surprise, and then it's too late.
I have to admit, like so many women, I always knew there was a chance. But like so many women, I never thought it would be me. I never thought I'd hear those devastating words: 'You have breast cancer.'
I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.
When I was diagnosed I didn't know how epidemic cancer was. You find out that everybody you know is touched by this disease.
Whether you are rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, young or old, cancer knows no boundaries.
I was told 50 percent of the population gets cancer. Everybody is going to be affected.
