Emotions

One of the most arduous trials of having cancer is dealing with the emotions that come with it. Fortunately and unfortunately, I’ve both had and seen someone with cancer and it’s not an easy stree to cope with. There will be times when you feel up in a great mood and other times you’ll feel in the dumps. Either way, it’s important to your healing process that you control your emotions and in the end, come out stronger in the end.

To show that it isn’t easy, but you’re not alone, here’s some emotions that I dealt with and my two bit about them.

Lymphoma

     Lymphoma is a cancer that begins in the immune system cells called lymphocytes. These lymphocytes are white blood cells that travel through your body in a fluid called lymph. There are lymph nodes are over your body, with a concentration around your neck, that filter your lymph. When micro-organisms gather in lymph nodes, the nodes swell. The cancerous cells can travel from node to node through lymph, making lymphoma a fast-acting disease with a need for immediate medical attention.

Non-hodgkins is a classification of the type of white blood cell that is cancerous. Of the two, hodgkins and non-hodgkins, NHD is typically found to be more curable.


A bit on myself...

A little information

To get started, I think it's important to have a general understanding of what cancer is.
So, what is cancer?

The easiest adaptation of the definition that I’ve come to understand is that cancer is the growth of bad blood cells. Let me explain.

Your body produce blood cells that reproduce proteins using a genetic code. That code is used to produce new cells everyday and to keep your body replenished when old cells die. Now imagine a cell with a different genetic code was produced. Typically this “deformed” cell would be ebbed away by the body’s white blood cells before any duplication could occur, but suppose your immune system didn’t stop that cell from reproducing. Now you have the growth of a new cell, unlike others in your body. These new cells from a growth called a tumor that can replace and destroy healthy tissue.

Cancer symptoms vary widely based on the type of cancer.

This is true and very important to know. Not only that, but even symptoms and the severity of symptoms can vary depending on the person's body. Every body is different, right?

Intro to Speak on Cancer Blog

It's the one thing people are most afraid of, for friends, for family, for others, and for themselves. Everyone is afraid of having cancer, of any sort, but a lot of people are afraid of what they don't know, such as the experiences a person goes through when experiencing having cancer, the treatments that follow, and living life afterward as a survivor. It’s true that it’s an arduous trial to be given, but with support and the will, having cancer can be made a lot easier to handle.


I'm going to let the cat out of the bag. I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma and T-cell leukemia just a few years back. I am now cancer free and living life just as anyone else does, with some minor complications that I don't even know if they are tied to having cancer or not. I have a girlfriend, I have a job, I go to college, I have hobbies, and most of all, I have a life. Having had cancer is a large part of my life, but it's not everything. I still have my control over the next "x" amount of years of my life, which I plan on living to the fullest.

I've created this blog to share some of the experiences I've had with cancer, to outreach to anyone who is interested in learning more about those experiences or talking about them, and to support others who are also faced with this adversity, whether it'd be a patient or family or friend of one.

I learned from my experiences, how special it was, how comforting, and how alleviating it was to have someone else to talk to and to empathize with during such trialing times. I can’t put into words how much that meant to me personally when I had someone to talk to and to always have family and support. I started to do the same for other patients and asked how it affected them. They all said something similar to what I had felt, that it had helped them through their day to day struggle to survive.

My goal with this blog is to provide what others provided for me: support, information, and just somebody to talk to.