My childhood hadn't been any di-erent from anyone else's. I'd
embarrassed myself, laughed at myself, gone through teenage angst.
My family loved me growing up-still did now. Cancer hadn't changed
me. If anything it had made me stronger. I'd had a fear of needles as
a child but I'd gotten over that-I'd been stabbed by them thousands
of times during operation. I was no longer afraid of them, like I was
no longer afraid of death.