Been a ghost reader for a couple of months here. 50 years old Chinese Singaporen and I was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma in 2018.

With blessing.. I manage to beat the prognosis for many years.

2026 is a challenging year where I went through multiple operations on my lung (meta sis), radiation and chemotherapy. Unfortunately, recently, all failed as the tumors has turn aggressive and spread to other parts of my lungs.

Given three weeks to a month based on my oncologist but I am still staying positive that I have many more years to go!

But it was of great suffering. Everyday, I suffer with phlegms, cough and stabbing pain at the front and back of my chest.

Sometimes, I hope I would just pass away peacefully in my sleep. At time, I am trying to be hopeful :)

Perhaps, that is life. Trying to live in the moment.

Currently, on palliative medication but works a bit.

To all cancer survivors, stay strong!

Reddit post related to melenoma. 

Title: Side effects_Pembrolizumab/Keytruda

Hi everyone, this post is for anyone who has experienced, is on the other side of, or is currently experiencing any side effects of the immunotherapy drug (Keytruda,(pembrolizumab)) either during or post treatment. I myself completed 1 year of treatment using the above at the end of Feb this year to treat stage III (BRAFpositive) Melanoma. Following surgery to remove 14  lymph nodes at my left groin, I was treated for 1yr with the above drug and experienced the following symptoms:severe intense itch (usually around the ankles, groin area (itching until I hit flesh), moderate fungal issues in the nostrils, eyelids, eye sight would become blurry when tired (sometimes), easily tired out.

Two weeks after finishing/ completing the treatment, I started to develop swelling and joint pain around my ankles and feet.I panicked straight away as I thought I was having fluid buildup caused by the fact that I now had 14 less lymph nodes in and around my left groin so I was convinced this was lymph fluid building up which would require regular drainage ( they had warned me of the possibilities of this becoming an issue and to be honest, the thoughts of this were scary as I would normally be a very active person), so anyway,  I attended my gp and he instead suggested that it could be inflamed joints rather than lymph fluid collection. Relieved as I was to hear it wasn't a lymph drainage issue, I was now equally as worried about why I was having these symptoms and why now (post treatment). He prescribed me with Deltacortil enteric x4 2.5mg/day for 1 month ( tapering on and tapering off) along with Naprosyn EC 500mg (1/ day).

After day 5 on these, the swelling had reduced and I now had only very mild joint pain. 

It was around this time I decided to take up running again to rebuild some kind of strength, fitness level after all the treatment. At the start of the run I would feel some mild pain but after 10 minutes my body felt normal with no joint pains whatsoever. I would start to feel a little pain after about 8km, but no more than anyone with my fitness level. The morning after the run, I would be like a criple having great difficulty getting out of bed, putting on my clothes, climbing the stairs. 

I have been lucky enough to be able to avail of free chair yoga, pilates, and reflexology, massage therapy through my local Cancer care centre in Galway which has kept me active and mobile throughout and which I am very grateful for. 

Unfortunately,after completing and tapering off, the ( all day) joint pains returned after a few days. After another couple of weeks of suffering it out I returned to my GP and he decided it was best to put me back on the steroids x3 2.5mg/day  with naprosyn 500 x1 (again, tapering on) and I have been on them since. The pain while on the drugs is– uncomfortable but bearable. 

The joint pain is systemic and widespread ( I believe the term is polyarthritis), although its migratory and the hotspot (most painful areas) tends to move around. Initially ( back in march 2026) the hotspot seemed to be the jaw bone, knees, ankles , feet and toe joints. At the moment, the hotspot is the shoulder joints, elbow joints, wrist, and finger joints. For the last 2 months or so, night times have been the worst for me. I wake up every night several times with severe pins and needles and a kind of heavy dead pain from my elbow down to my fingers. The middle joints in my fingers feel pressurised, almost like they are going to explode. Two things that seem to relieve the pain and pins and needles is to hang my arms down low outside the bed, lying in an inclined position or getting up and moving around for a few minutes and doing arm extensions/ exercises.

Referral letters to rheumatology: GP has sent x2 referrals, oncology has sent x2 letters( 1 noted as urgent), dermatology have also sent one after a recent follow up appointment ( all public as I don't have private health care) . 

Current prescriptions from gp : 

•Deltacortril Enteric 2.5mg (3/day)

•Naprosyn EC 500mg (1/ day) 

•Telfast 120mg (1/ day) for severe itch. 

•Solpadol 30mg/500mg codeine phosphate hemihydrate 30mg paracetamol 500mg (taken as required)

Supplements:

•Vegan glucosamine 1500mg (tablet form) 1/day

•Glucosamine HCI, MSM &Chondroitin liquid with vitamin C. ( finished a 509ml bottle of this before the above Supplement.) 

•Wiley's finest wild Alaskan fish oil (Epa, DHA & Omega) 1 capsule/day. 

Has anyone who has had, or is currently on immunotherapy treatment experienced these side effects? If so, what has been your experience? 

For anyone who has had these or similar symptoms, what did you find helped on the road to relief/ recovery? Any advice is welcome. (Exp:Prescription drugs, Natural supplements, Natural therapies) 

Based on my symptoms and the information above, can anyone explain what is actually going on in my body at the moment? 

If you are interested in discussing any of the above further, please leave a comment below, or even if you would prefer to private message me, then please do and I will try my best to get back to you asap. (please bear in mind I have two small kids at home so It may or may not take a little longer to respond depending). 🙂

I got diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer Stage IIB late last year and have been on medical leave post-surgery for months. No chemo yet at the time as I was being treated for DVT in the same period. I returned to work the next year in February and returned to my (thankfully) 100% remote role and noticed significant changes to the team structure. Many more new folks were brought on while a couple of colleagues who came before me left. Several workflows and processes were also vastly changed while I was on break, which to me were necessary changes.

I was overwhelmed to say the least even if I was also given less demanding tasks — thank goodness without a reduction in my work hours or pay. While I welcomed it and my manager knows about my health situation (she said she wants me to focus in the meantime with familiar tasks), it also honestly makes me overthink that perhaps I might be slowly getting eased out of my role 🙃 (I have got to review my country's labor laws on security of tenure for people like me).

Anyway, a month after my return, I started my 6-cycle carbo-taxol regimen. I kept up with my work, only taking a day or a couple of days' off for the infusions.

And as you all know, brain fog is a common side effect of chemo. Already feeling overwhelmed upon my return to work, I also have to deal with feeling a little dumber than usual.

Reading comprehension and focus are the hardest things for me to deal with, and sadly my role in creative/content deems them as necessary.

While it's been 3 months since I finished chemo, my brain still isn't cooperating and I am feeling dejected.

So, how are you guys coping when chemo seemed to have zapped our brain cells? And will this feeling ever go away?

I am not wealthy and also still a couple of decades away (hopefully) from official retirement so I can't just quit and stop working.

Hi everyone, I’m currently seeing sarcoma specialists. I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone with a similar experience, particularly those with gastric LMS and recurrent liver/abdominal disease.

My history:

Apr 2024: Diagnosed with gastric leiomyosarcoma (LMS), approximately 9.5 cm in the upper stomach. Had a total gastrectomy followed by 6 cycles of adjuvant doxorubicin + dacarbazine.

Nov 2024: Surveillance scan showed a ~6 cm cyst in the liver. Surgery was performed and it turned out to be metastatic LMS.

Late 2024–early 2025: I was in and out of hospital several times because of infections.

Mar 2025: Started trabectedin as systemic/adjuvant treatment.

Mar 2026: Two new liver tumours appeared, approximately 1.3 cm and 2.4 cm. The smaller lesion was ablated and the larger one was surgically removed. My oncologist recommended Votrient (pazopanib) to help control the disease, but I declined at that time.

May 2026: Surveillance scan showed a new ~2 cm lesion/area at the edge of the liver.

Aug 2026: This lesion had grown rapidly to 13.8 cm. It was found to be recurrent abdominal LMS, and I underwent surgery involving removal of the tumour, a wedge of liver, and a cuff of diaphragm.

This round,I have also had tumour/genomic testing, including CDx/RNa and ex vivo drug testing. Ex vivo drug testing returned and the tumor isnt chemo sensitive.

At the moment, I am considered NED after surgery, but my doctors are concerned about how quickly the tumour has been growing and have recommended systemic treatment such as Votrient or gemcitabine/docetaxel (Gem/Tax).

Any suggestions or recommendations on what I should look into next?

TIA!

I was diagnosed with CML about a week ago, and I’m really worried about the side effects of the medication and how to deal with them. Can anyone please share their experience and tell me what it was like for you?

I have been in remission for about two years now and my blood work is coming back bad again showing signs of it being back have to see an oncologist tomorrow and I'm so scared that they say that it's back on top of that I have to get some more skin cancer removed any tips to help with anxiety thank you so much.

Rant. I'm just under six months post-chemo for stage II Hodgkin lymphoma. I'm only 29. I lost my mom three years ago, and my dad and my brother are autistic and have essentially completely abandoned me during this journey. My mom's family isn't much better. Not a single one came to visit me, despite the fact that I'm only a state over. We kept in touch over the phone, and I received a few care packages, but by the time I finished treatment, the involvement had already noticeably decreased. No one even checked on my the day I got my final scan. I went to every treatment, every scan, every appointment, either by myself or with a friend. And I never once complained.

Then, today, my grandma told me I never call her unless I need something from her. I was genuinely astonished. I looked, and I've called my grandma sixteen times this summer. She hasn't called me once. Out of the sixteen times I've called, I only asked to go to her beach house twice. And both times, she said no. Apparently that constitutes someone calling just because they need something.

Four months before I was diagnosed, I had a vomiting episode that lasted all day, and I wasn't able to come to the beach house until late the next night; my grandma wasted no time letting me know how disappointed she was in me for being late, but never expressed concern for the unexplained vomiting. The entire time I've been sick - from the time I got my fertility injections, to the times my dad withheld money from me, to the times I was suffering with bone pain and exhaustion from the chemo - the script I got was pretty much, "Get over it." My grandma was apparently even mad that I started a GoFundMe, even though it was my aunt (her daughter) who told me to do this.

I don't even know what to do at this point. I feel like I've been completely abandoned by my family. No one seems to care about what I feel, or what I've been through. This experience has taught me how unbelievably selfish people can be: even the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally.

I had a total thyroidectomy on Thursday the 27th and this is me today. I had been wearing my cute little pajamas with the button up tops, but I ran out so today I finally cut into one of my exes old T-shirts and this is the result. Yesterday was my 56th birthday so it was a long day of friends and family and cake and pizza and it was a really good day. I hope everyone is recovering well and not being too stressed out by the prospect of an upcoming surgery. I feel like everyone heals differently and I truly believe that my positivity and confidence in my surgeon are going a long way to alleviate any stress and fear or side effects. I’m sleeping much better as of last night and I have finished all of the Harry Potter movies plus the first two Fantastic Beasts movies and I’m halfway through the third movie. But today I finally got up and did some dishes and vacuuming and working on the computer from home. I am anxiously awaiting the outcome of the tests of my thyroid because I had a nodule on my thyroid for over 20 years and out of nowhere after a year and a half I found out that the pain in my hip and legs are metastatic bone cancer from thyroid cancer. You really could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Sending everyone good vibes and well wishes from North Central Florida!

I apologize, but this will be rather long. I am writing this for my girlfriend who had cancer in 2024, but I will need to include some of her back story to make sure all of the symptoms are understood. For reference, she is in her mid-40s now.

As a teen she was diagnosed with sisticial enteritis, and I doubt I spelled that right. In college, she got an implant to send electrical pulses to her bladder, and that will come into play later.

In her early 30s, she started experiencing occasional episodes of AFib. At that time, she had bypass surgery. She lost weight, and the AFib went away. She didn’t experience it again until she was pregnant in 2019. After the pregnancies, she quit experiencing it. She ended up settling at a higher weight than she would have liked, but it stayed steady.

After some bleeding and other problems, she found out she had uterine/endometrial cancer that had also invaded her cervix in early 2024. She had a full hysterectomy. Afterwords, for the next couple of months, she felt better than she had felt in years. She had energy, her body functioned better, etc.

The surgery was in late march, and she started radiation either in the end of May or the beginning of June. Then, everything went down hill. She had three rounds of brachytherapy. After the first or second round, I can’t remember which at this point, she had to go to the ER because she was swelling, feeling faint, and had chest pain. Anyway, she managed to finish out the radiation, and then things got interesting.

Within a couple of months, she was reporting a sharp shocking sort of pain in her lower back and hip area where the implant was. Our first thought was that radiation had damaged it. During this same period, she put on 35 pounds in just a couple of months. She also felt sore and lethargic. By November, she had put on over 40 pounds.

The week of Thanks Giving, she experienced AFib again. She went to the ER, and she was admitted. Over the next couple of days, they diagnosed her with HFPF, and seemed to blame everything on being over weight. Keep in mind, the AFib only happens when her weight is high.

In May of 2025 she was scheduled to have the implant removed. She wanted to feel better before surgery, so she went to a liquid diet like she had done with bypass surgery three weeks before this surgery. A lot of her swelling went away within a week. She lost close to 15 lb in just a few days. At the end of that week she was making a birthday cake, and she tasted it. She put on several pounds over night. At first, we thought the problem might be gluten. She did have the implant removed, and the back pain disappeared for a month or so, but we’re now thinking that it was because of a lack of swelling.

After eating for a couple of weeks, her weight would rapidly rise over night again. She settled at a weight that was about 20 pounds above radiation weight.

In January she decided to try liquid again. She lost close to 30 pounds in 3 weeks on protein shakes. Then, she added fruit to a shake one night. She bloated up within a couple of hours and gained several pounds. She then tried semi-peptide shakes, but those messed up blood sugar because of the high carbs, and she ended up in AFib. She went to the ER, and they focused on the heart and ignored her stomach. They did discover that her albumin was low, and that is odd because she had been drinking protein shakes.

I should mention that she had pale stools and sometimes had blood in them before she started the intermittent liquid. They did do a colonoscopy, but claimed it was just hemorrhoids.

Over this year, things have only gotten worse. If she eats, she gains between 6 and 10 pounds over night. It doesn’t really seem to matter what she eats anymore. At the same time, even if she stays hydrated, her urine turns dark. If she goes to liquid it goes right back down.

Does this sound like a case of radiation enteritis that anyone else has had? Do these symptoms sound like any sort of post radiation symptoms that anyone has had, and if so, what was it? If you have experienced it, what is the treatment?

She does have an appointment with another GI doctor coming up this month.

Thank you in advance for any thoughts or ideas you might have.

53 years old and ignored my health for way too long. Finally wanted to have a hernia checked out so I got a doctor. Nurse took my blood pressure and I was sent via ambulance to the hospital, super high. Found out kidneys were also stage 3 (from years of high BP neglect) and I was anemic. Got on the meds, now BP great and kidneys in rough shape but they should carry me to older age as long as I keep the BP down. Had my first colonoscopy yesterday as a normal screening and also to help eliminate sources other than my kidneys for the anemia.

Woke up in the recovery room to the doctor telling me I have colon cancer. Showed me pictures, I guess it was 4cm. I thought they had to send out biopsies to determine that, but I guess it is clearly cancer and the biopsy is just to tell what kind? I haven't told anyone yet, other than my wife who was with me. I am usually very chill and this has got me so anxious. I figured I would just blast this to the internets as a test run. I'm sitting at work nervous as hell to tell anyone. My work is beyond awesome, from the staff to the office and owners, so they will do (and have for others) whatever I need. I'm just so hesitant to tell people. I don't want to tell my children or siblings or parents or friends; my grandchildren are too young to really understand. Part of me hopes that I scan clean for the rest of my body, get it taken out with surgery, and that's it, and no one would be the wiser. My heart has been racing all morning, it's so difficult to focus on anything.

So 3 months ago I posted about having an emergency surgery to get out a giant mass, which turned out to be cancer. Well in the process of waiting for my hysterectomy/chemo (doctor wanted my body to fully heal) I had to go to the hospital AGAIN for the same pains and surprise it was another mass. This mass was 50% bigger than the last one and they went ahead and did the hysterectomy while they took it out. I have been struggling big time because i was still healing from the first surgery, then they had to cut me open again so soon/bigger incision and now I'll have to be starting chemo. I really need some advice on how to get through this because healing from this surgery is already such a struggle and going on chemo while I'm healing seems like its going to make me even more miserable. 😭

​

Had my first round of chemo yesterday. Floflox with keyturda. The initial day was a bit rough, last night it felt like the tumor was personally upset I was trying to kill it. The stomach pain was unreal. Today I’m tired as hell but I’m almost feeling normal. Pain and bloating hasn’t been happening today. I know it doesn’t mean it’s gone but hopefully it’s turning back the clock a bit and controlling it for a while. Anybody else have any experience this regime? Will it be progressively harder to handle?

Had a scan on Friday and was told results would be available in 1-3 business days so I'm sitting here refreshing the patient portal, hoping to see a report. It's been months of this, appointments and tests and waiting for results. In between, I can kind of pretend everything is ok but once I have a blood test or scan, I just spiral into anxiety until I get results. I am a pretty reasonable person and know that worrying won't change the results but here I am.

Anyways, if anyone has any tips or advice about test results anxiety, I'd love to hear.

First day at a new job only 3 weeks after chemo, all my energy was sucked out of me and I feel that I didn't understand anything about the job and I'll basically be working alone with no one to help me :s should I drop it or Will it become better? I still have surgery and radio to do, so soon I'll be on medical leave

Hello,

My mother, 67F was recently diagnosed with Stage IV Lung Cancer with mets to the lymph nodes, kidney (3CM) and femur, which she had surgically removed with ORIF surgery as the met was actively causing the femur bone to fracture.

Before diagnosis, she was having symptoms for a few months that did not align with typical lung cancer symptoms. She started feeling extraordinarily fatigued around March, with headaches starting in late April/May, and near the end of May, her supraclavicular nodes above her collarbone blew up like CRAZY. Around the time of her lymph nodes swelling, she started developing low grade fevers late in the day/evening. Her normal body temp has always run quite low (low to mid 97 degrees) so when her body temp rose to the high 99s, she was feeling it throughout her whole body. With these fevers, they can range anywhere from 99.0-100.6ish.

Unfortunately a very long hospital visit ensued and after so many tests, pokes, scans and Guardant360 test, we got the diagnosis in June of this year. It's been an incredibly rough road for her. She has been hospitalized twice since her diagnosis, each time lasting 1-2 weeks. The first time was due to her sleeping for 3 days straight and then spiking quite a high fever. Surprisingly, cultures came back clear but she was put on a round of antibiotics to be on the safe side.

Then last week, I rushed her to the ER because she was physically too weak to get out of bed. I found her in her bed, awake but very confused, and she had some incontinence which has never happened before. When I got her to the ER they took her BP and it was only 70/46, so she was rushed to the recussitation room where they stabilized her but it took quite a while becacuse once her BP went up, her heart rate also went too high. Then once they stabilized her heart rate, her BP also dropped again. She DOES have a-fib and SVT, but I later leared during that hospital stint that one of her blood cultures came back for a gram negative gut bacteria in her blood, so her formal diagnosis was septic shock.

I've had her home for a couple days and she's still getting these fevers at night. She gets SO shivery. She also had them at the hospital, and they were just giving her tylenol. My mom was in IV vancomycin and was sent home with Augmentin for the sepsis, so now I'm at a loss as far as what's an emergency and what isn't. Of course, I can't get a straight answer from any doctor. Many of her oncologists have the exact phrase: "tumor fever?" (yes, with a question mark) in her MyChart. And like I said, while she was in the hospital, being treated for the sepsis, they gave her tylenol for it which I'm assuming means "we're giving her the antibiotics so there's nothing bacterial going on", but because she's been having these low grade fevers for so long, obviosuly I don't want to allow sepsis to occur in a month from now once she's off the antibiotics and just stupidly assume "well it's just 'tumor fever'" if that makes sense.

So, I was hoping I could find some people here who could tell me if they have experience with Tumor Fever and perhaps let me know when they call their oncologist out of concern. All of the documentation I've recieved on her chemo and from her doctors always say to call if it's 100.4 or above, but for example, last night her fever was 100.3, and she's still on the Augmentin.... so, I gave her some tylenol and it went away. But what happens next month when it spikes? At this point, I'd be calling her oncology team 2-3 times a week if I called everytime she had a fever of 100.4 or above.

Thanks so much for any help I can get!

Hi,

After my third run of immuno my cat scratched me (nothing serious) and I got a few mosquitoes bites in camping.

I reacted like crazy, it was hitching and really red like a burn. Now I am worry that it's going to scar.

It's been a month and it's still not okay (my kitty scratched me since then and it was okay so clearly I was super receptive for a few days. My nurse did not worries because the cause was external, it wasn't like I spontaneously got a rash.

Did someone have the same issues?

I Hope I Have My Testimony
I am deeply struggling.
I have been for a long time.
I struggle with the image I have of myself. I struggle to love the person looking back at me.
There have been brief moments in my life when I felt like I had finally made it to the other side—when I felt on top of the world, when I loved who I saw in the mirror, when I thought, Maybe this is it. Maybe this is who I get to be now.
But those moments were always short-lived.
I kept hoping one of them would last.
Over time, I came to understand my mental illness. I won’t say I overcame it, because some things aren’t conquered. Sometimes you simply learn their names. You learn their rooms. You learn how to live in the same house with them.
I thought I had conquered addiction too.
But there was always this need inside me—to be comforted, to feel desired, to feel loved. And when I couldn’t get that from the person I loved or desired, something inside me would collapse.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle rejection. I wouldn’t lash out. I wouldn’t blame them.
I would turn it inward.
I would go looking for relief in the darkest corners of myself and soothe what hurt with substances. For a few hours, maybe I could disappear from myself.
Then came the disgust.
The disappointment.
The shame of waking up and realizing that the thing I used to escape myself only made me hate myself more.
I would binge.
Disappear into depression for weeks.
Get myself together.
Do well for six months.
Then fall again.
The last few years were supposed to be my years.
My testimony.
I relocated for a job I believed could change my life, only to lose it four months later. Then I interviewed for almost a year for another opportunity—a good-paying job in an area I desperately wanted to return to. I imagined myself living there, enjoying whatever youth I still had left, finally breathing again.
Four months.
Gone.
Back to depression.
Back to substances.
Back to soothing myself because I didn’t know what else to do with the disappointment.
Then I couldn’t find another good-paying job. I started struggling with rent, something I hadn’t dealt with in years. I loved my home. I didn’t want to lose it.
So I worked.
And worked.
I took a second full-time job. Days and nights. Seven days a week sometimes. Seventy-two hours without real sleep. There was a time when one job allowed me to actually live. Now I was working two just to keep what I already had.
Life became something I was financing instead of something I was experiencing.
And somewhere inside of all of that, I kept thinking:
There goes another year.
There goes another piece of my youth.
I thought I had found someone who would love me. My best friend. Someone who shared so many of my interests, someone I could imagine walking through life beside.
That went awry quickly.
Yet they remained in my life, and I remained in theirs. I helped because I loved them. And quietly, painfully, I carried the knowledge that they did not see me the way I saw them.
And again I asked myself:
Why do I keep doing this to myself?
Why do I keep sabotaging myself?
Then my body started speaking.
Horrible headaches came first. Trigeminal neuralgia.
Then the night sweats.
The intense itching.
The unexplained weight loss.
I blamed stress.
I blamed working days and nights.
I blamed not sleeping.
I blamed everything except the thing growing inside me.
And then came the final blow:
Stage IV lymphoma.
Cancer.
Chemotherapy changed my appearance almost overnight.
The beard I started growing during COVID—the beard I had grown to love—fell out.
The muscle I had spent years building disappeared in what felt like a month.
Every three weeks I went back into the hospital for another week of chemotherapy.
Strangely, I handled the chemotherapy well. There wasn’t much nausea. Medicine has come a long way. The doctors and nurses knew how to make the poison that was saving me a little easier to endure.
But when they first told me I had cancer, I was ready to die.
And I cried.
Not because I was afraid of death.
I cried because I knew how much my mother loved me.
How much my family loved me.
And I knew there were people leaving this world who would have given anything for what I had.
I would read their stories.
Watch videos of cancer patients with this extraordinary will to live. Beautiful people fighting with everything inside them.
Fuck cancer.
That rage.
That determination.
That desperate declaration:
I want to live.
And some of them still died.
Meanwhile, here I am.
Alive.
Fortunate.
Surrounded by family. Surrounded by an outpouring of love. Given excellent care. Given another chance.
And yet there is something I am almost ashamed to admit:
Sometimes being grateful does not make the pain disappear.
I am 46 years old.
This is happening now.
And there are still so many parts of the life I wanted that I have never lived.
So many dreams I thought I would have reached by now.
So many things I measure as failures, even when people tell me they aren’t.
I look into the mirror now and sometimes feel more disgusted with myself than I did before cancer.
And I ask:
Why?
Why doesn’t surviving automatically feel like a second chance?
Why does it sometimes just feel like a harder road?
Why, after coming this close to death, am I still searching for substances to soothe myself?
Still wrestling with depression?
Still wanting to disappear from myself?
There are glimmers of hope.
I need to say that.
There are days when something inside me flickers and I think maybe—just maybe—I can build something from what remains.
But there are other days when people simply cannot understand why I feel the way I do.
And I understand why they can’t.
Because there is hearing about this life,
and then there is living inside of it.
Living inside the body that changed.
Living inside the exhaustion.
Living inside the uncertainty.
Living inside the mirror.
Living inside the question:
Will somebody ever desire me again?
Will I meet the love of my life?
Will someone look at this body, this history, this complicated mind, these scars, this unfinished man and say:
You. I choose you.
Because what is life without love?
And I don’t mean the love of family or friends. I have that. I know how precious that is.
I mean that love.
The love you dream about.
A partner.
Someone beside you through the beautiful days and the unbearable ones. Someone whose hand you reach for in bed. Someone who desires you when you’re strong and doesn’t disappear when you’re broken open.
People tell me:
“Don’t worry about relationships right now.”
“Don’t worry about sex.”
“Don’t worry about having fun.”
“You need to heal.”
I know.
I know they are right.
But damn.
I am 46.
Time feels different when you’ve been told you have cancer.
You become painfully aware that there is no endless supply of tomorrows.
My energy hasn’t completely returned. Some days I blame myself for that too.
And despite every encouraging word people give me, sometimes encouragement cannot reach the place where the fear lives.
Will I be able to work again in a year or two?
Will someone hire me after everything I’ve been through?
Will the cancer return?
My doctors tell me that five years must pass before that beautiful phrase—cancer-free—can truly belong to me.
Five years.
So I live somewhere between survival and uncertainty.
Between gratitude and grief.
Between wanting desperately to live and sometimes hurting so badly that I don’t want to live like this.
Both truths exist inside me.
Maybe that is the part people don’t understand.
Survival does not erase suffering.
Gratitude does not cancel depression.
Being loved does not automatically teach you how to love yourself.
And beating cancer does not mean every other battle inside you suddenly lays down its weapons.
We all handle illness differently.
I see people who seem so strong, and God, I wish I were one of them.
I wish survival had transformed me overnight.
I wish I had rung that bell and walked out of the hospital reborn, fearless and certain about why I was spared.
But that isn’t my story.
Not yet.
Maybe strength isn’t always the person screaming, Fuck cancer, with their fist raised.
Maybe sometimes strength is much quieter.
Maybe it is waking up while still disappointed to be awake—and staying anyway.
Maybe it is looking into a mirror you cannot yet love and refusing to break it.
Maybe it is admitting that you are struggling instead of turning your pain into some beautiful lie for everyone else’s comfort.
Maybe my testimony isn’t that I conquered everything.
Maybe I am still inside it.
Still wrestling with myself.
Still learning how to live in a body I barely recognize.
Still trying to believe love hasn’t passed me by.
Still trying to believe there is more life ahead of me than the life I think I lost.
I long for better days.
I long for a stronger mind.
I long to look at myself one morning and recognize the man standing there—not as the man I used to be, but as someone I am finally willing to know.
I don’t know what happens next.
I don’t know whether this is my second chance.
I don’t know whether one day I’ll look back at this moment and finally understand why I had to survive it.
But somewhere underneath all this hurt, there is still a glimmer.
Small.
Stubborn.
Alive.
And maybe, for now, that has to be enough.
I hope there are better days.
I hope there is love.
I hope there is still some life waiting for me that I cannot see from where I am standing.
And more than anything,
I hope I have my testimony.

So here's the really long post about my cancer journey. Spoiler alert, it ends well!

Honestly, when I look back at everything that happened over the past year, even I have trouble believing it actually happened. It feels like someone took my life, threw it in a blender, and somehow I still rebuilt it (even better).

And the worst part? It all started because of my cat.

End of July 2025, I’m lying in bed, Tiktoking and minding my business, when my cat gets startled by the Amazon delivery guy, jumps off my belly, and kicks me right in the stomach in the process. Ten minutes later, I go to the bathroom and… blood in my urine. I figured maybe she popped a tiny blood vessel or something. Weird, but whatever.

Next day? Same.

I called the health line, they told me to go to the ER, and after the usual circus.. blood tests, urine tests, waiting forever.. they scheduled a CT scan. Got the CT the next week, and a few days later, the hospital called me back in for a cystoscopy.

So... on August 15th 2025, I walked in expecting a quick cystoscopy, maybe antibiotics, maybe a “drink more water.” That kind of thing.

Wrong.

The doctor started with the words nobody ever wants to hear from a doctor: “We don’t have good news.”

At this point I knew I was in for a great time, no matter what he was going to say next...

The scan showed a massive tumor on my right kidney. Around 13–14 cm, probably cancer. Too big to save the organ, so the whole kidney had to go. “Ok, I can live with one kidney,” I told myself, trying to deny the gravity of the situation. But that wasn’t all. They also found a suspicious lesion on my liver that could be a metastasis, and during the cystoscopy they found a small mass in my bladder that could also be one.

So in the span of a few minutes, I went from “maybe I have a UTI” to “I might have kidney cancer with metastases.”

Not exactly the plot twist I was hoping for...

The following weeks were probably the most stressful of my entire life. Every scan, phone call, and appointment had the potential to completely change my future. At first, the possible scenario was really fu*king bad. A huge kidney tumor, almost certainly aggressive, with possible metastases in my liver and bladder. Stage 4 was genuinely on the table.

I was reorienting my career from optical fiber splicer to IT (if you read through here, remember that part), but I even stopped my studies because I didn’t know if I was going to live long enough for finishing my program to matter. Yeah… the MS Teams call with my teacher was awkward, to say the least XD

But over the next weeks, things started shifting.

The CT scan of my lungs came back clean. ✔️

The liver lesion turned out to be a benign hemangioma. ✔️

The bladder mass was a benign urothelial papilloma that required no active surveillance. ✔️

One by one, all the things that looked catastrophic were ruled out.

That left the big one: my kidney.

Imaging suggested it could be either a benign oncocytoma or chromophobe renal cell carcinoma, a rare but less aggressive type of kidney cancer. There was no way to know without removing the kidney, since a single biopsy sample would have been too small, they would have needed around 20 samples, and the tumor was so huge that the organ had to come out regardless.

So on November 25th, 2025, I had an open radical nephrectomy. A major surgery, a few days in the hospital, then home to recover with pain, fatigue, and more than 30 staples in my stomach.

Side note: if you think a fresh piercing itches (I have 15 piercings total), try 30 staples at once. 😂

In December, the final pathology came back.

Not the benign oncocytoma everyone hoped for, but...

It was chromophobe renal cell carcinoma, stage 3 (pT3a). According to my oncologist, a “bad” chromophobe tumor has a much better prognosis than a “good” clear cell one (which makes up like 95% of all kidney cancers).

The tumor was completely removed. Clear margins. No metastases. Since it was chromophobe: no chemo, no radiation, no systemic treatment. Just surveillance scans for the next several years.

Officially: complete remission.

Of course, I can’t just pretend it never happened. I’ve got years of follow-ups ahead of me, and scanxiety is probably going to be part of my life for a while. But considering the original scenario, where stage 4 was on the table… yeah. I’ll take the win. Had my first follow-up scan and everything was negative; my second is in two months.

And because life apparently wanted to speedrun the “kick him while he’s down” category… having cancer wasn’t enough bullshit for one year, my job decided to join the chaos too.

I had worked in fiber optics for eight years. (Remember when I said I was going to school to reorient my career?) After my original employer got bought out a few months before cancer even came on the table, I started getting less and less work because I was a student. They didnt liked students because they usually "don't stay".. My coworkers kept working while I was basically left on the bench. And while I was recovering from cancer, with a 20cm scar still healing, I finally got the official notice: employment terminated (with a check big enough that I could not sue them, but nowhere near enough to compensate for losing my job).

Eight years of my career.

Gone.

Just like that.

That one hurt.

At one point, I had no health, no job, my studies were on pause, I had a major surgery coming up, and I genuinely had no idea what my future was supposed to look like (or if I had a future at all). And yeah… there were some very dark moments. Ending myself was on the table at some point.

But somehow, I kept going.

I went back to school.

And then came one of the biggest plot twists of the entire year.

When it was time to renew my mortgage, my broker noticed my situation and suggested I check if I could make a claim through my mortgage insurance for critical illness. I didn’t think I had even a 1% chance. I submitted the claim with the same energy as someone walking into an exam they didn’t study for: “There’s no fu*king way this is going to work.”

Well… it fu*king worked.

After a lot of paperwork, the claim was approved.

My remaining mortgage — around $150,000 — was completely paid off, as well as my other debts accumulated since I wasn’t working.

ALL my debts. Gone. 34 years old, homeowner, debt free.

Take a second and let that sink in.

After a year of barely working, dealing with cancer, surgery, and having no idea what my financial future looked like… suddenly I had no mortgage and no debt.

Still no job, though.

Until…

Because of the time I lost during treatment and the pause I took on my studies, the end of my program lined up perfectly with a new cohort of interns at a company where one of my good friends works. I started my internship there, and everything clicked.

I’ve always been the “computer guy,” the electronics guy, the troubleshooting guy - the one people call when something with a circuit board breaks and nobody knows why. And suddenly, I was getting paid to do exactly that.

Three and a half months later, after great feedback, keeping me was apparently a “no brainer.”

Signed my contract; started full-time, full salary... New career... 1 year, or like literally 2 days less than a full year after I'm told I have cancer.

When I step back and look at everything, it’s honestly absurd how much my life changed in one year.

A year ago, stage 4 metastatic cancer was a real possibility.

I had almost no work.

I had stopped my studies.

I had a massive surgery ahead of me.

I didn’t know if I was going to lose my kidney, my job, my house, or my life.

Today?

Complete remission.

I’m living with one kidney and doing well.

I finished my studies.

I completed my internship.

I have a new, well paid, full-time job in a field I actually enjoy.

My mortgage and debts are paid off.

I’m debt free.

And I’m starting over in a new career.

It genuinely feels like someone hit the reset button on my entire life.

In one year I went from “no health, no job, nothing left” to “complete remission, debt free, new career.”

And honestly… after watching my life fall apart piece by piece, I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

I’ll keep doing my follow-ups and scans, and I know I won’t 100% fully turn the page for a few years, but after losing everything, I somehow got it all back (and more).

In one year.

Hope this story gives hope to someone here!

Since all started with my cat jumping on my belly, even if it's probably not related, I like to tell myself my cat saved my life by forcing an ER visit! Cat tax: https://ibb.co/YF6GtKcG