The positive thing yeah, yeah its kind of strange because I do owe so much to my cancer, I mean before I was just a 16-year-old kid with nothing interest… not special in any way, well not, you know, I didn't have anything to give to anyone, I didn't have any kind of reason. I didn't have any idea, I just went round in this kind of stupid thought of instability of being just 16 and everything would be the same forever and I'd just kind of carry on life from day to day and just waiting for the weekends and not really with any aspirations of doing anything.
I owe my cancer so much, the way that it's given me so much confidence, I feel as though I can now help people. And its given me a great deal of sympathy for other people who are both ill or who are also going through anything, any sort of pain, any sort of depression, I now feel as though I can help and I feel as though I've had this chance and this experience for, you know, that's given me such a… made my personality who I am now. I feel as though I went through my kind of teenage years of just, well my early teenage years of not having any sort of clarity of thought of what I wanted to do or to who I really was. But now I really sort of feel confident and happy in who I am and I now know so much more about the world than I did before.
A friend of mine a couple of years ago said to me, who had also been ill, she said to me, “To have known true suffering it's inevitable that that person dedicates their life to ending the suffering of others”. I think that's kind of true because I mean the other people who I've met who have been ill sort of feel that way that you, to have sort of gone through that is the same, such a negative experience so many positive things can come out of it, it's a really amazing thing. Once, if I had the choice of, and I would never go through it again - bloody awful - but if I had a choice of having that in my past and not having it in my past I definitely would have it in my past, its been a life changing experience so much so that I would… I mean everything that I, most of the things that are now good in me are directly through the cancer. The things that I hold that are good in me, the things that I really like about myself and my personality are because of what I've experienced through having the cancer, has been very enlightening I suppose.
Now how do you see your future, how do you? What are your plans?
I want to help people with cancer, that's all I want to do really, that's all I've ever wanted to do since I've been ill, it was like my defining moment. I just want to help people, I want to help people, ideally young people, sort of who have, younger people who are receiving therapy.
I've just finished a pharmacy degree and I'm just about, I've got a year before I can practice but I'd like to ideally work in an oncology ward, ideally perhaps one attached to a teenage cancer trust which is a…
A unit?
A unit which I would like, I'd really, really, I'd like to help because I think that I could give more than just, just like professionally I think I could give something emotionally as well to people who are young, when I was 16 I know what it feels like, I know what it's like. I want to help. And that's what I would like to do, my goal. |
