No surgery, I have incurable blood cancer (multiple myeloma). I spent a year not responding to several different flavours of chemo. After “getting my affairs in order” and saying goodbye, they decided to do a stem cell (“bone marrow”) transplant, then another. Two more years of chemo, and now I’m in “myeloma remission” — cancer levels are too low to detect, but it always comes back…

Same, but chemotherapy was my trigger. Some doctors tell me “that never happens”; others say “yea, that’s common”.

I used to be able to speak five languages fluently, now three of them have almost completely disappeared. I can’t watch movies because I can’t keep track of who’s who and why they’re doing that. Same with reading books.

I pick up my iPad and can’t remember why. I read something and get stuck on words, I recognise a word and I know that I know what it means, but can’t remember. I’ll be speaking, get halfway through a sentence, and can’t remember what I was talking about.

I feel like the guy in Flowers for Algernon, who had it all and then lost it; and he knows it.