I never really talked about it with anyone at all. So it, it was very much something that I've gone through. An experience that I had and I never discussed it or talked to anybody because I didn't think anybody would want to know about it. I didn't want, you know I, I especially at that age, you know. I was aware of that at the time. It's like most of my people I knew my age you know it's the last anyone they wanted to, wanted to talk about was me being ill and sort of what happened to me, I don't think.
I've been able to talk about it a lot more since I got older but in school it, it was literally was something that only I felt I was aware of. It was like a big, it wasn't like a big secret because everyone knew that I was, been off school ill. What the actual particulars of what happened to me and how I felt was a big secret. I never really discussed it with anyone. So I don't know whether that was the, that was a mistake from, from my part but I didn't really, I didn't really talk about it that much. And, but like just said in school I never really had any, any problems.
But who have you talked to about your experience now?
I was I, I just talked to my, talked to my friends in the past, friends that I met in, in university, friends from, from before, you know from school. Then fortunately the other people in my family have had a cancer so I've been talking to them about it as well. And just people in work, just since working in the university there's been people in work that I'm, have suffered from various types of cancer and I've talked to them about it and shared experiences. It's been, I've talked about it a lot more seriously in the last few years and it's mainly because it's because it's with people who have suffered from the same thing.
It's very difficult to talk to people who, who don't, haven't suffered from it without them sort of, I mean, it's a big thing about cancer now is that it, you know it is one of the, is the big sort of fear, buzz word of the, you know, it makes people very frightened talking about it. And people take a step back and sort of think, oh I, you know that, that was really terrible and you know. They're not they don't want to hear about it but it's, it is a bit sort stressful for people to talk about it because people don't want to offend you or don't want to, you know, they think, they automatically assume you're very sensitive about it, you know. They're right to think that. But I, I just never talked about it really with anyone not even my parents I don't think really, not, not in depth, not when I, not when I was a child, not when I was young and a teenager.
I never discussed it. And I would advise people if they, if they feel they want to then to sort of find, you know, to, to do it, talk to people about it. I mean it, I was very, surely it's extremely difficult at that age but I, I didn't and they can, I don't think, I don't think it helped, I don't think it really helped to be honest. I think I would have been in a bit better position if I'd done that. Yeah so I, I didn't I didn't talk about it really. It was very much something that I kept to myself.
A lot of the time I've, I've thought about if there was some way I could volunteer and do some kind of, anything or any kind of work with young people who suffer from cancer because I just feel from my own experience although I've got through it and it's, it's probably had a positive effect on me overall although I don't know how I would have turned out if I hadn't had it but. I'm, I'm not glad it happened to me but I can see the positives from it happening to me. It was, it was a, it was absolutely horrible experience that I went through and it was. It was an experience, I felt alone, I quite alone when I was having it and that's no, that's no observation on the people I was being, treating me or my parents or anything. I just think it's one of those diseases that really isolates people when they are having it because anybody who isn't suffering from it can't, you can't make them understand how you feel and how, how. It's very difficult to describe when you're having any kind of treatment like that. |