I am 23, the year of the iron birthday, the gate of darkness. I am ill.
What I quickly learned after my diagnosis is that the world of a cancer patient has many parts and a good deal of uncertainty.
Since I had cancer I've realised that every day is a bonus.
Chemo does its best to make you lose your femininity. You lose your hair. You lose your eyelashes. You lose your eyebrows.
I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche?
I'm holding onto the hope that there is some reason that I got cancer and there is something - that may not be very clear to me right now - but that I will do.
I had good care going. I had Meredith and the family. And I didn't want to become the object of some kind of pity, most of all. I didn't want to show up on the Internet, 'Tom Brokaw has cancer.'
An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision.
For the last 20 months, I've just been going from one hospital to another.
I've been very open about my health challenge because I think it's really important to let my constituents know that in spite of the fact that I am still in treatment, nothing about this treatment prevents me from doing my job.
A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.
My cancer scare changed my life. I'm grateful for every new, healthy day I have. It has helped me prioritize my life.
When a person has cancer, the whole family really suffers with her.
I remember seeing my father shaving my mother's head in the bathroom after her chemo treatments; It was so traumatizing.
