On January 6th of 2021, my life was changed forever. No, not because of the Trump Insurrection. But on that same day, I found out I had cancer.
Later on that month, I would find out that the type of cancer I had was a very rare form of pancreatic cancer. It's probably only about 1% of all pancreatic cancers diagnosed and usually found within elderly 60-70 year old men, but I was 24 at the time so it was extreme bad luck that I ended up with it. Because of it's rarity, my doctors at first didn't know how to treat it because there was very little information on it.

I remember one of the first doctors I went to, and they said very bluntly, "Your life will be shortened by this." I thought about that a lot.

After some surgeries and many hospitalisations, I started chaemotherapy. They put me on a 3 drug regimen to see how it would help. My tumours have thankfully shrunk very much and I do feel kind of hopeful for the future of being cancer-free. Months went by, I turned 25. I was thankful. I thought things would be fine and I wouldn't suffer from a lot of side affects from the drugs. I was wrong.

One of the chaemos I got was susceptible to giving people neuropathy, aka nerve damage usually to the hands and feet. My doctors said that it usually affects people after getting that chaemo for a little bit under 6 months. I made it roughly a little bit past 6 months until I started getting neuropathy.

It sounded little at first but it's changed my life a lot. Using my hands feel unbearable and I start to have trouble holding things. Even typing out this long post is very unbearable for my fingers due to the nerve damage in my hands. My handwriting has diminished. But most of all, I noticed the affect it's had on my art.

I'm not a professional artist by any means. I'm just a hobbyist. But art was one of those things that used to bring me comfort and I feel like it's slowly being taken away from me.


When I was younger, I used to love redrawing old art. It would show me how much I would improved and I would feel proud.
https://i.imgur.com/GzCF1ZW.jpg
This is an example of one I made back in 2016. I could obviously see improvement in the art and I was really happy. I felt like I was growing as an artist.

Since the diagnosis of cancer, I didn't draw. I would just either not feel like it, or I was feeling too sick to draw.
After a half of year of not drawing, I decided to try redraw an image from the past to see if I improved at all. When I finished, the results shocked me.
https://i.imgur.com/b4S2wKx.png
I drew this image at the end of 2017. This was the piece I decided to redraw.
https://i.imgur.com/PWD6oEf.png
And it came out like this.

I felt like I didn't improve at all. In fact, I think I got worse. Much worse. When I was drawing this, holding the tablet pen was unbearable and I realised I was unable to really do fine details like stubble as well anymore. It was agonising and my lines were messier. I wanted to cry.
How could this nerve damage change me so much? How could it take away so much from me?

Some months later, I drew again for someone's birthday.
https://i.imgur.com/MeQCGPA.png
After I finished drawing, I looked at the picture and wondered why my style changed so much. I was using a lot of random think brush lines to accent random parts of the picture like it was a Japanese sumi-e artwork. But as I thought about it, I think I adopted this style to distract me from my failures of being able to draw as neatly and detailed as I used to.

I feel like cancer managed to take away something dear away from me, and I get sad by it every day.
My neuropathy may either get better or it will be permanent. Maybe it'll even get worse. Only time will tell, but as I'm told, neuropathy takes a very long time to recover from, if I'm lucky enough.

I don't know why I felt like I needed to write this. But I just felt like I had to tell someone. I've been holding this in for so long it was getting unbearable, so putting it out in words is slightly cathartic.

But all I have left to say is: cancer sucks, and I wish it upon no one.


My hands are tired. I'm tired.
I think I'll go to sleep now.