JESSICA BANKS
W
hen I was in college, I went through
so much stress, then I felt really ill one day. I came home and ended up having to go to hospital where I was told that my appendix was erupting. When it was erupting, they found cancer in the appendix and told me it had travelled to my bowel and that it was a stage four, a really high-risk cancer, so I could have died from it. When I was at college, people would start treating me differently. They wanted to show that they cared, but they were treating me like I was a different person. I usually laughed things off and joked about them, but people would pat me on the shoulder, which is nice and caring, but then they’d be like, “Do you want to sit down? Are you okay?” and it just felt uncomfortable because your best friends, who you thought that you knew, just weren’t the people you knew anymore. You just want people to treat you like a normal person, as well as caring, but they didn’t. If teachers thought something in class was ever so slightly to do with me being ill, they’d be like, “Do you want to leave the room?” and I’m like, “Just because I’m coughing, doesn’t mean I’m dying! I’m okay!” Once, someone asked me if I was okay just because I sneezed and it’s like, “I can sneeze. I can breathe. I just want to talk to someone like a normal person.” It was just uncomfortable to be around those people and, at the same time, I had a best friend who fully stopped talking to me. I wanted the support of that best friend and they just weren’t there either.
I just didn’t know what to do.