Facing a cancer diagnosis

Getting a cancer diagnosis at age 21 is not something most people expect and rightfully so. It pains me to look back at that point in my life but I feel it is essential that I don't forget that tomorrow isn't promised. Cancer or not.

I had just tested positive for Covid-19 in July 2022 and I spent a week in bed, only using paracetamol. Sooner or later, my fever was gone and I began to feel well again, or so I thought. I tried to do my usual walking around the neighborhood and then noticed that I was losing breath. It struck me as unusual cause I was 21 at the time but a lot of people assured me that shortness of breath and loss of fatigue can last up to 3 months or more after the positive test.

So I carried on like that till the 5th of August and thought that it was suspicious that Covid would have a hold on me that young, so I immediately went to my GP, he listened to my lungs and told me that I needed to go to the internal medicine department cause my left lung was making weird sounds. At the general hospital, they discovered that I had water in my lungs and the inner lining of the heart (pericardial effusion), my WBC were extremely high and my heart rate was also up.

I got sent to the clinic in the capital city where they drained the water from my lungs, which is the most pain I have ever felt from a procedure. The CT scan results came back while I was recuperating and It turned out that there was a suspicion that I had ALL leukemia.

Alas, the bone marrow biopsy indicated that it was Leukemia.