Sweet ignorance#

It all started sometime in the autumn of 2024. My partner and I had long promised ourselves that we might go on Erasmus, and it was finally starting to look like it would happen. We have never lived outside of the Czech Republic and we were just about ready for a new and exciting chapter of our lives. Everything looked good, we were looking for a good university, ideally up north, where we could both find our matching mandatory courses and also explore a new and foreign country. We considered Latvia, Sweden, Estonia, but in the end, we settled on the Norwegian university NTNU in Trondheim, which suited us best in terms of subjects and location.

Norway is a great and beautiful country. It almost feels strange to write about these circumstances here at all, but unfortunately, for me, it will probably forever be tied to this sometimes still unimaginable life change. When we flew here on January 3, 2025, it would never have occurred to me what I would have to deal with just a month later. Our biggest problem was whether our exam dates overlapped and if we’d manage to buy tickets for the first student events organized by the ESN.

However, it must be said that even before the first signs of the diagnosis, I wasn’t exactly healthy. Before Christmas, specifically during a couple of really unpleasant exams, I went through an illness, probably the flu including a fever, which knocked me out for a week. But I was primarily focused on finishing the semester, so I suffered through it, crammed diligently for Mathematics for Knowledge Processing, and successfully completed everything as it should be. In mid-January I had a second illness, again with fevers. It was mostly before school started here, so I primarily spent it lying down with a blanket and some warm herbal teas.

But illnesses didn’t stop me. In January, we found many events and opportunities to meet new people. Thanks to our great student house, which was mostly empty at the time, we had the chance to invite other students and made a few friends. We also went to a cabin in the middle of nowhere and spent two nights without internet, electricity, or water, just a group of friends in a tiny wooden cabin heated by a small stove in -15 degrees Celsius. We played football on a frozen lake and also went for a swim in the icy water. I love remembering that, nothing weighed me down back then.

Just a small lump#

After the second illness, however, I noticed a lump that appeared on the left side of my neck. It was a few centimeters in size and not very visible on its own, only when I lifted it a bit with my finger. I had always heard that when you’re sick, your lymph nodes swell, so I didn’t think much of it. I’ll just wait a few days, it’ll go away, and I’ll be able to continue our Erasmus. But even after a week or so, it didn’t disappear, so I finally started dealing with it at the end of January.

The first task was to even find a doctor here who would be willing to examine me. For foreigners in Norway, this is quite difficult, most sources told me that I would have to transfer my general practitioner to Trondheim. They also said that doctors were all full and not accepting new patients. However, I also found contact for a smaller clinic where we, as NTNU students, could turn for health issues. During the first call, the lady on the phone asked if it was an emergency, to which I said it wasn’t, after all, it’s nothing serious, I just need my neck checked. With that answer, however, she brushed me off, saying they only deal with emergencies and I should find my own general practitioner. So, the very next day, I called again, this time stating it was an emergency, and I got an appointment for the next week.

The initial examination didn’t tell me much. The attending doctor was apparently in training. First, she examined me generally, and when I showed her my scary lump, she fell silent and went to look for diagnoses on her computer. In the end, she decided that, in her opinion, it was a lipoma (which she had briefly read the first paragraph about on Wikipedia), a lump made of fat that is completely harmless and can be removed with a simple operation. She told me it had to be this because the lump was nicely movable and soft under the skin. If it were hard, it could be something more serious, but that certainly wouldn’t be my case. I was incredibly relieved. But just in case, she eventually called another doctor, who also examined me and arranged another appointment, this time at the large Trondheim hospital, St. Olavs Hospital.

At this point, I was relatively calm. The second examination was just to be sure, and after all, I didn’t want to have an ugly five-centimeter lump on my neck, so I would even be glad if they could just remove it at the hospital, to get it over with.

The operation#

However, when I finally arrived at the hospital, I was surprised by the serious atmosphere. The doctor told me that they would only take a little bit of substance (or whatever it was in it) from the lump so they could examine it in the lab. Everything was quick, they just pricked my neck with a needle, took a sample, and then quickly told me potential diagnoses so I’d know what to expect. They had now ruled out lipoma, which scared me quite a bit. The primary possibilities now were an inflamed lymph node or, what I had already started to fear, cancer of the lymphatic system. For now, however, I tried not to worry about it, after all, what’s the chance?

Soon, however, they surprised me with a call saying I had to come in for surgery in two days. I didn’t have much time to process it, my main problem then was understanding the nurse on the phone and finding out where I was supposed to go. The language barrier was probably too strong, and I wasn’t able to decipher the name of the building, so in the end, my only clue was “Come to the building with 7-Eleven, you can’t miss it.” Communicating with the hospital is a problem that still haunts me, but I might elaborate on that another time.

Surprisingly, my partner and I managed to find it in the end. In the waiting room, the seriousness of the whole situation slowly started to sink in. After all, it wasn’t just about some examinations and check-ups anymore, I was really here for a biopsy. And all of this in an unfamiliar Norwegian environment. Fortunately, I had already found out that with a European health insurance card, I should have access to medical help abroad, but I was still scared of what it would be like. There were a lot of children in the waiting room, to this day, I don’t know if they sent me to the children’s department. A lot of the initial procedures were hidden behind the language barrier and my fear of asking questions. But I vividly remember finding a Norwegian copy of a Czech children’s book, Krteček or The Little Mole (Muldvarpen) on the side table there. We were reading through it, trying to translate it, laughing about the funny Norwegian words. It was nice to see a piece of home there.

But when it was my turn, my partner couldn’t come with me. The doctor first took me to his office and, without any hint of empathy, simply told me that I most likely had lymphoma, cancer of the immune system. I was in shock. All that time, I had held onto the hope that it would just be an inflamed lymph node, and I hadn’t even allowed myself to consider the other option. I had never been close to cancer in my life, I had no idea how it worked or what it entailed. But I didn’t have much time to think about it. The doctor drew a plan on my neck where they would cut me and then sent me out, saying they would come for me again shortly.

So I waited there, alone in the waiting room, trying not to break down from this new information. Occasionally, a nurse would pass by, or a patient would be wheeled by on a gurney, apparently heading from their own surgery, but no one really paid attention to me. It wasn’t until several tens of minutes later that a nurse noticed me. By then, I had given up my fight with tears and was crying like a baby. When she came to me and started talking, I was grateful. She offered me Valium, which I initially refused, but when I couldn’t stop crying even after more time, I took it. The nurse said it should calm me down. It didn’t really feel that way, but I can’t know how I would have fared without it.

Then it was time to go to the operating room. I was surprised that I didn’t even get a hospital gown, I had my tank top, which didn’t bother the surgeon, so they allowed me to keep it on. They just told me to lie on the table, taped me down tightly so I couldn’t see anything or move, and then injected local anesthesia into my neck. The injection hurt a lot at first, but soon I felt nothing but pressure and pulling of the skin.

It was strange to lie there. Everyone around me was speaking a language I didn’t understand, I couldn’t move, I was completely helpless and terrified. In the reflection of the light above me, I could see the outlines of my neck where they were operating, but I was afraid to look. I kept crying, and because I had to keep my head turned to the right side for the surgeon to have good access to the left side of my neck, tears started to collect in my left eye socket and had nowhere to go. All I could do was ask the nurse if she could wipe them for me, so for the rest of the procedure, she stood next to me, drying my eye with a tissue and trying to make calming smalltalk with me. I don’t think I was good company at that moment, but I’m greatful she paid attention to me anyway.

The whole operation lasted about half an hour. They didn’t inform me much about the progress, but when they started stitching me back up, I asked the nurse if I could at least see what they had pulled out of me when we were done, purely out of curiosity. However, the information must have gotten lost somewhere, so I never actually saw what the lump that caused me so much trouble looked like. The surgeon then just briefly told me I had done well, to stay strong, and that they should contact me with the results within two weeks.

The operation was over, and it all happened so fast. The nurses took care of me for a while, but soon my partner came for me, and we went home. In the end, I ended up with a scar about five centimeters long and had seven stitches. When the anesthesia wore off, it really started to hurt. I didn’t sleep much that night. I took paracetamol and laid on two pillows on my back, not even moving. After a few days, the pain subsided, but I could only safely turn my neck after a week, and my stitches were removed another week after that. I wore a medical adhesive tape over the scar for a few more months because a nurse advised me to. Today, it’s completely healed, and I must say, at least it looks really badass.

Waiting for the verdict#

After the operation, one of the worst periods awaited me. The first thing I did when I heard the term lymphoma was to look up the diagnosis. And of course, among the first pieces of information Google suggests is the life expectancy of patients. It varies from source to source, but I remember that the first estimate that came up for me then was two years. And it was really surreal to read such information and try to absorb it somehow.

Ignorance was blissful, but once I reached this stage of waiting, it suddenly became the worst option. Thoughts constantly raced through my head that I didn’t have much time left in this world. As someone uneducated in this field of diseases, I had always perceived cancer as an invincible killer from movies and TV shows. When Walter White found out about his cancer, it made him do crazy things simply because he suddenly had nothing to lose. It’s such a terrible word, an unimaginable diagnosis that I was unable to comprehend.

The only positive side, however it may seem, was that I could finally tell all this to my loved ones. Of course, my partner had been with me from the beginning, going with me to every check-up and constantly supporting me, but I didn’t want to burden anyone else until we really knew what was going on. At this point, however, it was relatively clear, so I finally decided to tell my family and close friends. I think everyone was as shocked as I was, I don’t remember their reactions anymore. But for me, it was a great relief, I no longer had to hide it, and everyone provided immense support, even if it was just over the internet. Their interest and communication helped me a lot through this.

I have to admit that I don’t remember much from this period of hopeless waiting. I barely wrote anything in my diary back then, I have no photos, no evidence. I was sure then that I really only had a few years left to live. I slowly started to come to terms with it, in my eyes, there was no other option. I would love to elaborate on it a bit more, but I don’t really know how. It all felt terribly unreal.

Diagnosis day#

About a week and a half after the biopsy, a notification landed on my phone telling me to come to the hospital. It was an SMS written in Norwegian, it just stated the building we were supposed to go to, but no other clues. We went to several receptions, everyone sent us somewhere else. We passed the general reception on the ground floor, from there they sent us to another by a door that said “Kjemoterapi,” and finally, we made our way to the oncology. When I checked in there and asked if I really had an appointment with a doctor there, the receptionist asked me, “Are you an oncology patient?” I just laughed and said I was there precisely to find out. But we still tried to maintain at least some optimism, maybe it’s just a local necessity to talk to an oncology doctor to find out you don’t actually have cancer. In hindsight, that was a truly naive hope.

Once we were sitting in what seemed to be the correct waiting room, the doctor called me on the phone. From previous communication with the hospital, I was used to English, so I was really surprised when she started speaking Czech to me. I initially thought that by pure coincidence, my general practitioner from the Czech Republic was calling me, and I immediately started apologizing that I couldn’t come for an examination now because I was in Norway. She just laughed and told me it was convenient because she was waiting for me right in the next room, also in Norway. So, I found out that my oncologist is Czech!

After this long and confusing prelude, we finally got into the office, and the doctor immediately started showering us with information. The main one, however, was that it was indeed cancer. It was bad news, but at this point, we were both glad to at least have some solid information.

So, as for the diagnosis itself, I have lymphoma, specifically the Hodgkin’s variant. Before, I had the impression that if a disease had a special name, it was always bad news, but here it’s exactly the opposite. This variant is, in the vast majority of cases, fully treatable. The goal of treatment is not just to halt the progression of cancer but to cure it completely so that patients can be completely healthy again. The following week, I also finally learned that it was stage three lymphoma, which surprisingly isn’t that bad and doesn’t change the chance of a cure much. According to the doctor, it’s an excellent prognosis, as she kept repeating that day, “It’s going to be fine.”

A new chapter#

I guess I’ll end this story here, after all, I’ve written a lot, and we’ve finally gotten to the diagnosis itself. However, a lot of time has passed since then, and a heap of other procedures and obstacles awaited me. I think I could focus on the diagnosis itself and especially the treatment in another post, a few things come to mind that I’d like to elaborate on.

But anyway, from this day on, I officially became an oncology patient, a cancer fighter, a lymphomie. It was a strange feeling to accept something like that, especially since I never expected something like this to happen to me in my life. I had always lived a relatively healthy life, avoided all bad things as much as possible, never smoked, exercised regularly. So how was it possible that this had to happen to me, especially at twenty-three years old? But I soon realized that cancer doesn’t discriminate, and sometimes you can do everything right and still end up badly, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Specifically lymphoma primarily affects people around twenty and fifty years old, so it’s actually good that I’m in the first group, where my body is still healthier and better prepared to endure the horrors that come with treatment. And I’m just grateful that I was incredibly lucky and out of all the terrible possibilities, I got the one that is so highly treatable. I keep trying to find some comfort in all that randomness.

By the way, if anyone knows how to end blog posts, I’d appreciate tips. Thanks for reading. :)