Hendrik, Belgium
In April 2019 my lung collapsed at work without warning. They thought I was addicted to drugs to have a spontaneous pneumothorax like this. Only a week later they found a tumor on the back of my lung pushing the back towards the front that lead to my lung collapsing. Only 4 months later they found out that it was cancer, without knowing exactly what type.
Me and my wife are expats. Our families are either 5 hours by car or 7 hours by plane. For me the biggest challenge was the phyisical treatment, for my wife the emotional stress. When the tumor was first discovered during a surgery it was removed, but without further treatment. Only when it came back in August 2020 I had chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. The COVID shutdown and closed borders made the life around us without family only relying on friends harder.
We were lucky to have a great medical team that is very experienced with this rare type of cancer, which is not far away from our home, but we were relying a lot on our friends that could be present during the treatment and our families that got later special permissions to enter the country. For me it helped a lot to sre my wife handling everything around me, our son, her pregnancy and her work, so that I could focus on myself. Knowing that my wife is pregnant and just having an amazing wife and son, a great family and incredible firends gave me strength.
When my lung initially collabsed and everyone thought I was a drug addict I felt not taken serious, but later on I had a great medical team around me that did all their best to help me - even during COVID.
I was diagnosed with MPNST which is a rare cancer and the odds to live a happy life years after your diagnosis are against you, but here I am, 5 years after I finished my treatment without evidence of disease. In the meantime I have not only two amazing kids, but three. I ran a 20 km race despite missing around 20% of my lung. Life can try to throw you a stick between your legs to make you tumble, but it can also be an amazing adventure with beautiful surprises. With good support and help from the medical site and your friends and family a lot is possible. Medicine has come far in the past years regarding cancer treatment and early stage diagnosis.