Tuesday, 4 February 2025

World Cancer Day 2025

Understanding a cancer diagnosis

For so long, I had viewed my story through the prism of my first encounter with cancer in 2009 and the gratitude with thankfulness for not only having survived but thrived when at the time of diagnosis research studies indicated my kind of situation rarely gave survivors another ten years.

This time last year, my request for a routine blood test began another journey to a new cancer diagnosis, over four months through tests and investigations, I learnt in June by an inadvertent medical disclosure of adenocarcinoma of the prostate.

Choosing and curating the people with whom to navigate the journey through the diagnosis and the treatment of cancer is a strange thing, people generally do not understand cancer and the way you present may not essentially indicate how seriously ill you are. Maybe, experience is the best teacher, if the observer is not self-absorbed. [World Cancer Day: What Is Cancer?]

Living a cancer reality

You take each day as it comes, the process of recovery after treatment is long and you can find yourself impatient when you realise you do not have the reserve of energy that deceptively comes in bursts and then deserts you literally abruptly.

Along the way, I have had such amazing support and understanding; the theme of World Cancer Day seeks to “create a world where we look beyond the disease and see the person before the patient.” In general, I have been seen and there are times I have wrestled with the experts to be seen, this has been encapsulated in the assertion that “It’s my body first before it’s your guinea pig.”

When I think of cancer, I think of many who have not been as fortunate, who suffered in ways impossible to articulate, then of those of us who have come out at the other end with our unique stories, and the united effort of medicine aggregating the body of knowledge acquired from all experiences to battle cancer to victory for our humanity.

More importantly, I focus on faith and hope, a future better than today where cancer is caught early and treatable. The best situation would be to avoid cancer completely. My advocacy is getting more black men to talk about Men’s things honestly, freely, confidently, and proactively for our lives and those we love. Here’s to World Cancer Day 2025.

Blog - Men's things - XXII

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