The begining

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.