My Name is Chris. And I have cancer. The good kind apparently. That’s what so many people think about Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, that it’s the ‘good cancer’, that I’m somehow ‘lucky’ I got it.
It’s not ‘good’, and I’m not lucky.
I have been fighting this since 2008. 7 years of grueling treatments. Chunks of my life I can never get back and all because I ‘lucked out’ and got the ‘good cancer’.
Before this, I lived a pretty quiet life. I met my wife, Naomi when I was 18 and she was 16. We worked hard, holding down two jobs and purchased our first home when I was 20, and got married two years later. Life was good.
But in 2008 I heard those fateful words – you have cancer. I was 28 and in that instant, I could see everything we had planned being stripped away.
I had several months of chemotherapy, then spent 4 weeks undergoing radiotherapy 200km away from home. I only got to see my wife on weekends. It was hard, tiring and painful. But I got that magical word at my next scan – remission.
9 months later, we got the all clear to start a family. Against the odds, we conceived quickly and Tomas was born in May 2010. Aside from my wedding day, it was the happiest day of my life.
8 months later I relapsed. We were heartbroken.
I began chemotherapy, followed by radiotherapy in Sydney, 600km away – again only seeing my family on weekends.
I had an Autologous Stem Cell Transplant in November 2011, which meant 4 weeks in Sydney. Naomi insisted that she be there with Tomas and I am grateful, as those days were the darkest of my life. I was discharged, but flown back the day after I got home as I suffered a mini-stroke. I made it home Christmas Eve, thankfully with no lasting effects.