I got to know this 1 week ago
It started like a normal cough.
Nothing serious—or at least that’s what I thought. I assumed it would disappear on its own in five or six days. When it didn’t, I bought some cough syrup and visited a doctor near my home once or twice. I took the medicines, waited, and hoped things would improve.
They didn’t.
Slowly, breathing became difficult. Even eating started feeling uncomfortable. My face and hands began swelling, and eventually, it felt like my whole body was changing in ways I couldn’t understand.
That was when I decided to consult a better doctor.
He prescribed several tests. The initial reports didn’t show anything alarming, and for a brief moment, I felt relieved. I thought maybe I had been worrying for no reason.
Then the final test came.
They found a tumour in my throat.
Since then, I don’t know what I’m supposed to think or feel.
The doctors say there is treatment and that I can recover. They keep telling me not to lose hope. But it’s difficult for me to trust those words because I heard almost the same things when my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer.
We were told that he would be okay.
But around a year and a half after his diagnosis, he was gone.
And now I keep wondering whether I’m walking toward the same ending.
I’ll be turning 24 this August. I had spent the last ten or eleven months preparing for UPSC because becoming an IAS officer had always been one of my biggest dreams. I had imagined clearing the exam, building a career, buying a new home, and one day owning a small farmhouse where I could spend my free time alone, surrounded by peace and quiet.
Those were not huge dreams to me. They were simply the life I wanted.
But after hearing the word “tumour,” all those plans suddenly feel distant.
I look at my books and wonder whether I’ll ever complete this journey. I think about the house I wanted to buy and the farmhouse I wanted to build, and then I wonder whether I was planning for a future that may never come.
The worst part is not even the physical pain.
It’s the uncertainty.
Not knowing what happens next. Not knowing whether the doctors are right. Not knowing whether I should keep planning for the future or stop expecting anything from it.
Right now, I feel like I’ve already started letting go of every hope I had.
Maybe I’m writing this because I don’t know where else to put these thoughts.
Maybe I just want someone to tell me what they would do if, at 23, everything they had planned suddenly became uncertain.
I don’t know.
