how it felt to be diagnosed with cancer at 26

I was 26 when I was lying, so ill I already thought I was dying, in a hospital bed in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. It was December 2020 during the height of covid and the borders between each state in Australia and the rest of the world were shut so I had no option to see my eldest sister who lives in Darwin, Australia let alone the rest of my family who were back in the UK.

I could barely open my eyes, I was weak, skinny, delirious, in pain and discomfort and … terrified. I knew I was unwell, I knew I felt like I was dying, but I was unaware of quite how serious my situation was until I begged that my CT scan was looked at again then low and behold my surgeon and his team came back, opened the curtain around my hospital bed, shut it behind them, and came and sat really close to me by the bed - trying to hide the apprehension of what they were about to talk to me about on their faces.

They explained I would be going in for emergency surgery first thing the next day and that I would be kept in the hospital until I was better. In some ways this gave me reassurance and I was relieved that finally, after months and months of my health deteriorating, I may finally feel some ease. After telling me that I would be having emergency surgery it didn't take them long to ask ‘do you have a history of bowel cancer in your family?’.

Instantly I replied ‘no none’ but quickly after I said that it dawned on me that health professionals would never mention the ‘C word’ unless they had every right to think that this is what they may find when they operated. I remember staring blankly at them and then I asked ‘I don’t have cancer do I?’ …. ‘We dont know yet’. I think I knew, deep down, in that instant that I had cancer. 

At the time I had a horrible plastic tube going up my nose and in to my stomach due to my constant nausea and sickness but it was so uncomfortable it stopped me being able to talk properly. I begged, cried and pleaded that they took the tube out so I could at least Facetime my family who were 11,000 miles away - they agreed and left me alone to speak to my family over the phone.

I took a minute to try to process the conversation before I called but all I could do was lie staring at the blue hospital curtain thinking … I am 26, in Australia, away from my family, and I am going to die in this hospital room. This isn’t how I want to go - there is so much I want to do. At that point I felt so much intense discomfort and I was so delirious I was certain that the cancer was killing me and the reason I felt so ill was because it had spread too far to be saved.

Obviously it did turn out to be cancer - if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now. Weird how life ends up going. But (without using the ‘toxic positive’ word of lucky), fortunately for me, it was caught at stage 3 and even though it had spread to lymph nodes it had only got to 1 which was removed as well as the tumour during surgery, so my diagnosis was somewhat positive as I was reassured that with a course of chemotherapy the future looked bright.

It is easy to think that because I was declared cancer free that I would be fine and grateful for that. Which believe me I am, gratitude is actually one of the crucial emotions that has got me through this whole sh** show, but that isnt the end of the journey and it certainly doesnt stop the overwhelm of other emotions that flood you - sometimes when you least expect it.

I was 26 years old. Up until that year I had been loving life with friends in Australia, doing well in my job that I had been sponsored in, doing the usual 26 year old things. You NEVER think it will happen to you at this age or even understand that it could happen to you - we feel like we are indestructible so we aren’t prepared for this. I had to learn (VERY quickly) how to deal with this in circumstances that were almost beyond belief. Who gets diagnosed with stage 3 cancer at 26 years old, during a global pandemic while living in a country on the other side of the world to their family let alone a country that has banned international travel which stops your family coming to see you, and has to choose between flying back to the UK for chemo when the healthcare system has been broken by the pandemic but at least I would be with family or stay in Australia where the system is in a better place and I would be able to begin treatment quickly. Me… of course it was me. My friends and family have always said I don't do things in halves and that I like to cause a stir and I guess this was another example of me doing just this.

People say that when you go through life-changing events it instantly changes the way you see the world but you can’t quite understand just how true this is until it happens to you. When I went in for a follow up with my surgical team I knew I had to ask them how close to dying I had really been when I first went into the Alfred Hospital on the 9th December 2020 because I really felt like I was dying. He told me that the side effects of the tumour blocking my colon had put my body in such a dire state that my heart probably wouldn’t have been able to continue pumping at the rate it was for much longer. I had nothing left in my body, my electrolytes were shot, I hadn’t eaten properly for months and I had drank nothing more than a glass of water for days. 

I left that follow up thinking wow I really was staring death in the face. My life will never be the same again. As humans especially at a younger age we naturally take time for granted but I knew I never would again. Even though of course there are parts of me that wish I never had to go through this, it really did awaken my appreciation for just how precious life and time is and how we cannot be living for anything other than what will make us happy. I hadn’t even reached 30 yet and I had been so close to never having the opportunity to do things that I wanted to do in life. 

Of course not everybody experiences the same emotions after a cancer diagnosis but I really did feel like I had been given a second chance at life at 26. In some ways this felt liberating but it doesn’t come without challenges. It would be great if everyone around you could understand what you have been through and how your view on life has changed but its impossible because people haven’t been through what you have. This leaves you living in a sort of balancing act between living in the new way in your new life after cancer but still wanting to live the same life as your friends and it can be really tough. 

Something that I believe makes a cancer diagnosis as a young adult harder than other ages is the lack of support around you or the lack of people who have gone through the same thing. I knew nobody who had gone through the same as me so you have no one to just understand and be able to say ‘I get you’. In and amongst the blank stares and the people empathising with your situation there’s an intense loneliness that goes along with a cancer diagnosis but young adults are still expected to either get on with it or are almost forgotten about - as young people are ‘too young’ to get cancer. Ha ha ha. 

I like to think that I have got better at this balancing act. I spend a lot of time in my own head processing and giving myself the understanding and patience that other people can’t - of no fault of their own but it is a fact that if you haven’t been through the same thing as someone else you just can’t understand their feelings. But I always make the effort to get out of my head and resume ‘normality’ so that I can still live in the same world as the people around me because I still love that life … it’s just different now.

I have had to work really hard at shifting my perspective so I can see this horrendous thing that has happened to me, by no choice of my own, as a blessing. Some days I still feel sad, lost and behind, but overall I am actually very grateful for my new outlook on life and the fact that I have been forced to change paths because I do believe that in time it will prove to be more beneficial to me and show what I am truly here to do in life. 

* Since my first diagnosis I have had a re-occurrence of metastatic cancer on my lung which was found in 2023 at 29 years old. Ohhhh boy am I looking forward to writing future blogs about just how fun that was … L.. O.. L. *