World Cancer Day
You never think it will be you.
You go about your days making plans, imagining futures, dreaming ordinary dreams.
Life feels steady, predictable.
And then it isn’t. One phone call.
One scan. One word—cancer—and everything fractures into a before and an after.
Cancer is often described in numbers: incidence, survival rates, treatment protocols. Necessary language, perhaps—but incomplete. Because cancer is not just a diagnosis. It is a life interrupted.
One of the hardest parts of that journey for me was how quickly individuality can fade—how easily you become a diagnosis, a case, a treatment plan. Cancer changes your body, but it also reshapes your sense of time, identity, and certainty.
Cancer is more than a medical problem to be managed. It is a deeply personal experience that cannot be reduced to biological markers alone. As a survivor, I learned that what stayed with me were not only the clinical decisions, but the human moments: being listened to, being believed, being treated with empathy as well as expertise.
Person-centred cancer care honours this. It recognises that the best outcomes are not achieved through medicine alone, but through care that sees the whole person and responds with compassion.
This World Cancer Day, United by Unique is not just a theme. It is a call to look beyond the diagnosis and see the person before the patient. It is the future of cancer care I believe in—and the one I hope we continue to build, together.
