a little worried

hi, im Anthony and im 20 years old. i had my 8th and final round of chemo on december 2010. it was b-cell lymphoma. recently my doctor (Dr. Uzair Chaudhary, in my opinion, the nicest doctor I have ever met)looked at my CT scan and said its still shrinking. the problem is my insurance expired on the 4th of this month. but he said its most likely just scar tissue.

to be honest i was never worried about having cancer (in a life threatening way) through out the whole journey but now i have no choice but to stop keeping tabs on it. not till i get hired again anyway... i also started looking up pictures of different cancers and realized how lucky i really was not to have cancer as severe as those others. but like an epiphany i also realized that if i had caught it even a month later, it could have meant a different fate.

i suffered about 3 months before i was even diagnosed. it started off as a minor cold or so and then some strange sensation that i was being slightly strangled. like my neck was being squeezed just enough to feel the pressure in my head. then came the coughing and the blood. i coughed up so much blood each day and my family doctors kept diagnosing me with pneumonia.

the worst it ever got, along with all the previous symptoms, was when i couldn't breath while laying on my back anymore. i couldn't sleep for weeks. see the reason why i couldn't do much through out those three months is because im not wealthy haha.. the last straw was when i noticed a segment on the left side near the center of my chest was noticabley bigger.

when i was finally diagnosed my reaction was... maybe a bit too... lax. "oh... heh-heh" what the doctor who first told me said was a little unsettling. he said "this isn't a joke. you can die." unbelievable really... too bad i didn't remember HIS name. anyway, this story may have been told many times before me but even so... its kind of strange to me that of all times its now, nearly midnight, 6 months after my last treatment that im starting to realizing that i could have died and lost the love of my life, my family, and my future.

i haven't even accomplished much in life really but my appreciation of life is just too indescribable to anyone who hasn't experienced a close demise. i feel like i've taken it for granted. although i know im still young, i still feel that despite my age i have wasted soooo much time and i regret it all. i've never been able to tell anyone how i feel about this. for certain people in my life i feel that its too late to start feeling this way especially since during my treatments, i treated IT as nothing at all.

theres only a few people in my life that i care about and they all think that im a head strong person but its only half true. i blissfully mocked cancer without realizing it's true potential consequence but the moment i realized it, im turning into a coward hiding from my loved ones and seeking comfort from strangers. i just need to know if anyone else here has felt the same way..