June 21^st 2014 was the day that my life completely changed. Suddenly everything we built, planned and dreamed; was gone. When you see a doctor with an ash-grey face, you know sh*t is going to hit the fan and it did. Honestly, I fainted and it took me several months to realize what happened. I need to say it out loud: I have a very rare form of cancer with no known treatment.

The first few days were a blur. The only thing I can remember was my oncologist telling me that she didn’t know this disease either, but that we would figure it out together. At least she was honest!

Apart from that, there were many “first’s”. My first nights in a hospital, my first CT (immediately followed by second and third), my first biopsy (oh my, what is that needle long) and my first taste of a hospital meal… I also had my first laugh again. While showing me a video on how to inject the blood thinners (brand name Lovenox), the nurse remarked that it had to be injected in fatty tissue. “Very easy to remember,” she said, “as it sounds like ‘Love handles’ and everyone has those!” Martine (my wife), Cathy (our aunt) and I couldn’t control ourselves and had to laugh. The nurse looked at me and said: “Oh, you don’t really have those”.

A lot of doctors stopped by. They all lost me after “hi, how are you feeling?”; their language and vocabulary were one big mumbo-jumbo of unknown words. The only things going through my mind were an infinite amount of questions: What happened? What caused this? Too much stress? Why me? What have I done wrong? Am I going to die soon?

I wanted to get out of this parallel universe, back to my normal life and most of all: I wanted to go home..