One woman’s Hong Kong ovarian cancer journey and her positive message for fellow sufferers, their friends and family
Hilary Faulkner, diagnosed three years ago with an aggressive form of cancer that has since spread through her body, has captured her positive approach to the disease in a book to help fellow ‘cancer virgins’
Hilary Faulkner is sitting on a bed in a small room, in the Hong Kong Integrated Oncology Centre, smiling and laughing as she recounts her ongoing battle with ovarian cancer.
March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month in Faulkner’s native Britain, and she praises the support she has received in Hong Kong, where it is the sixth most common cancer among women. “The chemotherapy nurses are the unsung heroes because they’re the ones that put the needles in, monitor you, phone you the next day to see if you’re doing OK, and really give you a lot of support.”
Faulkner is on a mission to raise awareness of ovarian cancer, a disease she was diagnosed with in 2014, using her own journey to shed light on a medical process only the initiated have been unfortunate enough to experience.
Writing on her “secret blog”, she shares her experiences with those new to the treatments and provides space for others to do the same. The posts can be seen only by those she has vetted, and include insights on lengthy chemotherapy treatments, what to expect from a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, which drugs she has taken, the side effects of treatment, gene sequencing, and other basics of undergoing treatment.
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“You’re just like a cancer virgin when you start,” she says. “You have no idea that there are so many cancers, so many drugs to treat cancer, how it affects your blood, just how much time it takes up really. You just kind of start on this journey and you don’t have a clue.”