After months of hiatus, I find myself back to writing my column again. As you read this piece, I also ended my one-month isolation from my Radioactive Iodine Therapy (RAI). I was hesitant to publicly announce it at first but after devoting myself to learning the ropes of navigating a new season in my life, I know that the announcement will do good than harm.
Last April, I found out I have thyroid cancer. I was in the middle of a training away from home and was with co-teachers whom I only met during the seminar. As I read the word “carcinoma” in my biopsy result sent to my email, I felt numb and I kept reading the word as if I do not understand what it means.
Never in my entire life did I imagine that I would receive such diagnosis.
No, please God, not cancer.
I kept the news to myself not because I was afraid to face its consequences, but I was afraid of how people will react.
The fear to be ridiculed and judged in the age of social media hype kills us more than
our diagnosis.
Sometimes, it is not about the diagnosis itself, but how people can easily give hurtful comments that makes the journey even more difficult.
While I appreciate some people who messaged me asking how I was, I was not spared from unsolicited advice, too.
“Grabe man gud kaayu ka mu trabaho mam, mao na nga gi cancer ka,“ said one of those who messaged me.
While her comment was not intentional to hurt me, it felt like a knife stabbed on my chest.
I do not blame her. There are so many misconceptions about cancer that we must continuously educate the public about.
Research suggests that such misconceptions are not uncommon in the Filipino context.
Mendoza-Dreisbach and Dreisbach (2018), in a study of Filipino breast cancer survivors, found that awareness and acceptance of cancer were hindered by “fear and denial due to financial instability” and “folk belief.” Their study also described cancer as a subject that remained difficult to openly discuss among some Filipino patients and their families.
But while I was in isolation, I devoted my time understanding myself better than understanding how the world looks at cancer patients.
I learned to cancel people’s opinion in as much as I learned to accept that regardless of how and what we feel, the world will not stop with us.
You become what you believe, and you pick up the broken pieces on your own.
Cancer taught me that nobody will help me except myself.
“What stage naman ka?” asked some of my friends. To be honest, it is one of the most difficult questions to answer.
To me, it does not matter.
Regardless of stage, cancer is cancer.
If God will give me years to live, I will embrace it with gratitude but if God will give me days, months to go, then I will accept it.
Regardless, I will prepare.
