Five years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. The doctor said it was chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a form of leukemia.
It happened a few months after my retirement. I was 61 years old then. My last job was stressful. We were building a condominium, and time was of the essence. Any delay would trigger a massive penalty. It was normal to work up to 12 hours a day, and to keep myself awake, I took a lot of painkillers. A few months after retirement, I had chronic pain in my stomach, and most of the time I just ignored it, but one day I was told after visiting a doctor that it might be something worse than typical stomach pain. So she referred me to a hospital. Because the pain was unbearable, the hospital did some routine tests. I was told I had perforated appendix and would require an emergency operation.
I was dead lucky; I was operated on the same day as my admission and had to stay in the intensive care unit for almost a week. During that time, I had to undergo various medical tests, and that's how the doctor found out I had cancer.
Then came bone marrow biopsys. It was quite a painful procedure, especially in my case, since it involved removing a small sample of the bone marrow inside your bones for testing, and the bone cannot be numbed. In my case, they had to do it twice, maybe because the first one was not done correctly, but I never asked the doctor why.
But the most difficult and painful part was when the doctor called me for something like counseling. I was told I probably had blood cancer, and it was not good. The hardest part was when I was told some people lasted for two months and others for twenty years. I could not sleep the whole night; all those regrets and the folly of youth kept flooding my mind. And the big question is: would I last two months or would I last twenty years?
A few weeks later, I was discharged, but I was told to immediately come to the same hospital should I start to lose weight, like 10 kilograms, within a short period of time. Fortunately, I had not faced any serious or abnormal weight loss for the past few years. In fact, I had gained a few kilograms after my failed attempt to quit smoking.
Before we go on please be reminded that I am not a doctor nor am I an expert in cancer. I cannot claim to know more about cancer than a doctor. Before I was diagnosed with cancer I knew very little about cancer.
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