LIFE LESSONS
I Felt Like a Cancer Fraud Sitting in the Oncology Waiting Room
Grappling with imposter syndrome amid the reality of cancer treatment
“You don’t look sick.”
Sets of tired eyes turned to look at me as I bounded out of the stairwell and into the oncology lobby. My movements were too swift in a clinic packed with exhausted, battle-worn people.
Their eyes didn’t judge me, but my inner critic did with the words that live rent-free in my head. “You don’t look sick.”
It’s a statement that’s been bandied about in my direction for most of my living memory — until I was wait-listed for a double lung transplant. Lugging around my oxygen tank, gasping for breath, there was no denying I was “sick” because I was obviously dying.
But now I have a perfect set of donated lungs breathing for me. Radiation therapy be damned, I’m taking the stairs whenever I can.
And I wasn’t sick, not really, not in comparison.
I’d caught the squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) invading my ear early enough. SCCs are aggressive skin cancers; they can grow rapidly and can invade (metastasise) into other areas — or, as I eloquently call it, “they can go nuclear.”
