21. Glad they made it to their 50th Birthday.
“I took a new job, moved to a different state, and went to a new doctor, at age 40. He was an ex-USAF doctor, pretty close to retirement. He suggested a digital prostate exam. I asked if this wasn’t about a decade early. He said it wouldn’t take long. He found a nodule. Referred me to Urologist, who dismissed it and said it very unlikely.
Then I went to a second Urologist who did his own exam. He ran two inconclusive PSA tests, and then two biopsies. It was found on the second biopsy. I wouldn’t have made it to my 50th birthday to get that part of the exam at the customary time.”
22. What a Friday!
“It was my first year in college, drank a lot and thought I was hung over a lot or just really tired. I was moving out of the dorms and into an apartment by myself for a couple days, then my mom came that weekend to help me finish and unpack. Well, I had got very tired moving, like extremely tired. She started yelling at me that, ‘I wasn’t helping and that I was acting like a 70-year-old man.’
Rewind a couple months, I went to the Health Center on campus and they told me I had a cough. Fast forward to that night, I got really sick for no reason, then I went to health center the next day. My lymph nodes were the size golf balls, and everyone there had this white look on their faces and would NOT look me in eye.
I got sent to the second rate hospital in the area because it was the closest. The ER doctor told me I had 5 years to live, then they brought in this heart specialist because they thought my heart was infected. Well, he basically called them idiots and said I should be at the other hospital in the city.
After this roller coaster, I found out I had a cyst in my chest that was giving me a bacterial infection. I was in the ICU for a few days, when they removed the cyst (like open heart surgery, it was 9cm x 11 cm, sitting on my heart, lungs and windpipe) they found Hodgekins Lymphoma.
6 months later of chemo and no radiation, I was considered in remission. 5 years after that I was considered cured. Best Oct 13th, which was a Friday too! Woo!”.
23. She knew it right away.
“Not me, but my wife. At the time of diagnosis I wasn’t in the picture (it would be two years later that we’d meet at graduate school), but she was engaged to be married at the time. She was conscious of herself, despite being only 23, and always did self-exams on her breasts after her grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother had gone through it twice.
One day in the shower she felt the lump. It was about the size of a pea. She waited to tell anyone at first, but once she started bleeding from her nipple she knew right away that she had breast cancer. Tests and doctors confirmed it. Fiancé dumped her because he couldn’t be with a sickly woman, that was beneath him (which did me and her both a huge favor as we see it; he was an abusive jerk). After considering options, she opted for aggressive chemo treatments and a full double mastectomy. To quote what she said to the doctor, she said, ‘F—ing take them both. Once will be enough.’
We weren’t even dating yet when I learned she’d had cancer two years prior and was basically still healing. Zero f—s were given. Made her my wife 3 years ago and couldn’t be happier.”
24. It started with an itch.
“My nephew at 22 went to the dermatologist for an itch that wouldn’t go away. It felt like hives, only internal. The doctor didn’t find anything and recommended a chest x-ray. Found a mass the size of a baseball. Determined it was Hodgkins Lymphoma stage 3. He’s on his sixth round of Chemo. Went in for an itch, left talking about life expectancy. He seems to be doing OK. Girlfriend is sticking by him.”
25. It wasn’t the pregnancy.
“My sister-in-law (24) started experiencing weird numbing sensations in one hand. She didn’t think anything of it, just thought it was pregnancy-related (pregnant with their first). The numbing started turning into slight twitches and became more and more frequent. Eventually, it started spreading up through her arm, and her neck and face would begin going numb. She wouldn’t lose consciousness, but she couldn’t remember anything that would happen while it was going on and other weird stuff.
Her OBGYN and another doctor said it wasn’t anything to worry about, but after she had a really bad seizure-type thingy my brother took her to the ER. One MRI and a few hours later, we find out she has a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. Emergency surgery the next morning removed most of it from her left frontal lobe.
The biopsy came back as HIGH Stage 3/LOW Stage 4 Anaplastic Astrocytoma.
After 2 months of radiation and ongoing chemo (5 days on, 23 days off) she was doing well. Baby is cute as a button and doing great.”