CHOSEN

By Mr. Sunil Ramdeen

On a clear and sunny afternoon in late November of 2021, a man looked me in the eye and uttered three words that would shatter my world in an instant. "You have cancer." That day my life as I knew it ended. That day my life as I now know it began. The man was my urologist and he had just received the results of a biopsy I had undergone just about a month earlier. In the weeks leading up to that fateful day there were cautionary signs that my consultation might not have gone well but take it from me, nothing, absolutely nothing prepares you to actually hear those words coming at you. It felt like someone had plunged an icy dagger into my gut and was slowly twisting it, around and around, even as my face burst into perspiration from a sudden and unbearable heat on the outside. In an instant I was bombarded by a range of emotions; disbelief, fear, anxiety, anger, despair and confusion all mixed with the realization that everything that I had planned, all my hopes and dreams, had just come to a crashing halt. All the things that I thought were important, things that I had prioritized before, evaporated into an emptiness. I was flung into uncharted waters and forced to confront a reality that had always been someone else's. Cancer was always something that affected some other person, never me, never ever me. Truth be told, you could say it was quite by coincidence, maybe even good fortune that I found out about my diagnosis in the first place, or you could say it was something else. You see seven weeks before that fateful meeting with my urologist, my wife and I had booked an appointment with an internist for our medical checkups. In was early October 2021 and the world was slowly starting to breathe again as the shackles of COVID-19 gradually dropped away. The Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) had redefined the way people viewed and approached personal health and hygiene and, having suffered symptoms of the virus during the very early days of the pandemic, I had a new appreciation for a more salubrious lifestyle. I was then just 49 years old, a relatively young guy, although I must confess that a somewhat carefree lifestyle meant that I was overweight and had been on hypertension medication for several years, so any concern I had about my health involved my Body Mass Index (BMI), cholesterol levels and even sugar intake. Since I have a family history of heart complications with both my Mum and brother having had heart stent surgery and a couple of uncles who had to seek treatment for heart attacks, this was fresh on my mind. The doctor noted my concerns and prescribed the usual tests but also decided that he would have me run the gamut and dropped in some other procedures, including a PSA or prostate specific antigen test. In the end, I would have to thank God that he did.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DB622ZWR
• ISBN13: 9798333866257
• Release Date: July 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"