26/6/2019
It's something
to 9AM and I am sitting in the waiting room. Not really feeling nervous for the
ultrasound that I am about to get done, but more annoyed by the time that this
appointment is taking from my working day. I must be in a meeting at 10.30. I
need about 5 minutes to get to my car, which I got just two days ago (solely
for the purpose of taking me from home to work, because public transport is
just awful). GoogleMaps tells me that I will need 13 minutes to get to my
meeting. That makes, let’s say… 20 minutes of travel time. So, I need to leave
this hospital at 10.10 at last, even better before that, so I can find a
parking spot in peace. In the waiting room I see two more women that will
probably go in before me. Based on my observations, average time of a check-up
is about 15 to 20 minutes. Going over the calculation in my head, I should
still be able to make it to my meeting on time.
Going in with my
head already a hour ahead in the meeting, I say “hello” to the doctor. He is
honestly surprised by my so called “bad manners” for not greeting him properly.
His weird over-reaction to my “hello” gets me out of the job-thinking and puts
me and my mind into the clinic. He checks my breasts, and everything seems
fine. Now is the time for me to mention the little lump that I found last week,
just above my collarbone. It doesn’t seem dangerous because it doesn’t hurt, I
can even move it around a bit, so it is kinda fun to me. But you know, just in
case…
Doctor checks
the extra thingy that I have, and he doesn’t look to happy about it. He decides
to puncture it to further diagnose what is going on.
I am quite
confused, but still thinking that it might be just a weird reaction of my lymph
nodes to the mononucleosis that I was getting over in the beginning of this
year. A body can react weird to something and everything could still be okay.
But I realized that I was set to spend the day at the hospital, so I had to
cancel my meeting and everything else that I planned to do on this day.
My day continued
with some blood-taking, lung x-ray, doctor meetings, more blood-taking and a
lot of waiting in between. My blood tests came back weird, showing that I was
quite sick. I was even more confused. The x-ray showed that I have pneumonia. I
went along with this diagnosis, making me quite happy and satisfied since it
can also explain my lump in the lymph node, with the inflammation and stuff.
For the time, I am not thinking of any other options. I mean… pneumonia- not
great, not terrible.
I finish my day
at the infection clinic, where they still work on my pneumonia and bad blood
results, yet they don’t really find anything interesting.
On the top of
this amazing day, I now feel that I have to tell my parents about the
inconvenience that is happening. I didn’t want to mention breast ultrasound
because I didn’t want to upset them without need. Now it might be the time to
do so. They are definitely not happy when I share the news and I can hear the
worry in their voices. I can certainly understand them, but I try not to think
of the worst possible outcomes of this situation.
All in all, this
is the day that I came in healthy and got out with pneumonia and cancer.
28/6/2019
I go to work
although I am advised not to, because of the suspected pneumonia. I still don’t
feel sick or something relating to sickness, so after a day off I decided that
I am capable of working and go to work. I also kinda have to be there since my
boss is going on vacation and we need to make me a plan of work for the
following days. At this time, I am working at this company for exactly one
month. I really enjoy working and I am looking forward to what I will be doing
on my own for the next two weeks. It is my first serious job. Although I work
as a student for now, I have a good feeling that they would hire me, and I
could continue with what I do. It is really a great first job and I am very
happy and excited. I hope I can prove myself in the next two weeks so that they
see that I am able to work on my own as well.
Work goes
according to plan, but I do start to feel a bit tired at the end of the working
day. I might be finally getting sick? Probably.
In the evening,
me and Simon meet with our friends to whom we need to hand out one of the last
wedding invitations. It’s Friday night and guys are quite in a good mood,
telling stories about their single-guys summer time. It is fun, but at the time
I am getting more and more sick. I feel so bad that I actually order tea on a
hot summer night.
1/7/2019
Over the weekend
I was feeling completely crapy, apparently my pneumonia caught up with me. I
had a bit of fever but by Monday morning, that was mostly gone. Still I called
to work that I will be on sick leave today and went to the doctor.
At the doctor,
there was more blood-taking. The results were a lot worse than last week, so I
got antibiotics and went home to rest.
Rest didn’t last
long. I got a call from my doctor from last week. It was one of the most weird
and confusing calls I ever got, including awkward teenage-boyfriend calls. They
got back the results from the punction and the sample is suspicious for
Hodgking lymphoma.
It hit me and I
wasn’t prepared for that. At least to hear it over the phone. I might have a
cancer. Hm.
As a Master of
Biotechnology, I of course clinged to the word “suspicious”. My more analytically
programmed mind didn’t accept the suspect to be the real thing. Anyone can be
wrong when they look under the microscope. And I was hoping that my poor sample
was treated by the most incompetent and foolish cytologist there is on the
planet, and that he or she made a terrible mistake. Can happen to everyone, and
I hope it happened to them with my sample.
