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Illustration by Christine Wei
I arrived in Montreal ready to take on the world at Concordia University. I was fresh out of my childhood home and enrolled in a Bachelor of Commerce program, majoring in finance.
Naive but excited, I attended every student finance event, all designed to introduce us to clubs, internships and industry mentors. That’s where I met some of my closest friends. I also applied for a prestigious two-year investment management program. After many interviews, I got the incredible news: I’d made it in. It felt like everything I wanted was falling into place.
But behind the excitement of that fall, something darker was simmering. I chalked it up to burnout: just the usual exhaustion of a driven student pushing herself too hard.
What started with odd itchiness, skin inflammation, insomnia and fatigue compounded for months. Meanwhile, my dreams were coming true. Don’t get me wrong, I tried my best to get these symptoms looked at. Between classes and working on the investment management program, I slipped into a dermatologist’s office. He prescribed antihistamines and other medications to treat my skin. I even tried light therapy meant for eczema. I bounced from appointment to appointment not knowing what was wrong.
First Person: Dealing with a cancer diagnosis in my 60s
By the end of the school year and some summer classes to finish, I had learned to adapt to the most insufferable symptoms. I was miserable, but at least, I was achieving my dreams.
I rationalized the hard, painless lymph node I lived with for a month. A swollen lymph node can mean so many things and nobody gets cancer at this age, right?
I finally went to the ER, alone, when the lymph node seemed to have spread to other areas in my neck. The doctors suspected lymphoma. The worst part? I wasn’t shocked. I had been sick for so long that part of me expected this. I felt like I’d traded my health for success.
The following month was routine for cancer patients: biopsies, blood tests, scans of every kind. My official diagnosis came in mid-July: Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Any cancer patient will tell you the same thing: a diagnosis puts your life in a new perspective – even when you are 19. I would walk into the Cedars Cancer Centre in Montreal and see people with worse circumstances and feel grateful that I had treatable disease, and the best support system I could have hoped for.
The biggest person in my support network was – and still is – my mom. She took me to my appointments, sat with me for hours in the ER multiple times. She even paid for a Wordle Unlimited account to keep us busy in waiting rooms. We had peaceful mornings in the park with a Starbucks coffee and gossip.
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My dad made sure I was not going to worry about anything else in my life: school, work and housing. He was also my mom’s rock so I could always have the best version of her and my older sister.
This brings me to another gift: appreciating a sibling. My sister has the biggest heart that gushes even if an ant dies on the sidewalk. She came to visit me between her classes and provided much needed positivity to my dad and I, who tend to look at things more pragmatically.
Through lymphoma, I realized that a good family is a gift, not a given.
My last gift was tenacity and resilience. Cancer meant missing out on life, spending hours at appointments and trying to hold on to the best parts of myself, even when I didn’t recognize who that was. I felt this the most during an autologous stem cell transplant. That involved spending three weeks in the hospital, receiving high doses of chemotherapy to make space in my bone marrow for the stem cells removed from my body before the treatment. In early June, I got my stem cells back.
I was a shell of the Véronique I knew in the hospital. However, it also meant the conclusion of my cancer (thus far). That was exciting and it was a seed for hope. That’s how I realized that even during the hardest of times, the event can be the foundation for an exciting next phase.
Through the harrowing adventures of cancer in young adulthood, I gained insight that often doesn’t come until later in life. So here I am, with my cancer responsive to treatment and positive results from my latest scan showing no evidence of disease.
I feel more powerful. I have my youth but also the wisdom of someone much older. Even better, I am back to school this fall and planning to work in investment management.
Someone else on their cancer journey told me, “There are valleys and mountains in life. You walk through all of them. Just don’t pitch your tent in the valley.”
Véronique Grigg lives in Montreal.
