Leander Paes Quotes

When they tell you that you have cancer, you panic.

Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Even the word 'cancer' brings back the nausea and pain, the fear I felt, and the heartbreak I saw in my parents' faces. The smells that fill hospitals and the constant tired feeling that comes with treatment are also permanently stuck in my memory.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

I'm not a type-B personality who knows I have a cancer growing inside of me and can live with the knowledge. I go into a kung-fu attack position when I go through the door of a hospital.

The word 'cancer' carries with it enormous fear, fear for the future, fear for family.

Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.

I've had a couple of family members deal with cancer, and I remember that moment where they're going into surgery, and you just have no idea what's going to happen, and it's really scary.

Probably the toughest time in my life was - was standing there with Ann as we hugged each other and the diagnosis came. And I was afraid it was Lou Gehrig's disease. As we came into the doctor's office, the brochures on his table there were Lou Gehrig's, ALS, and multiple sclerosis.

When they told me I had cancer, I thought I was going to die.

I remember just how afraid I was. I was just as much afraid of the treatment as the diagnosis. So I thought I could talk about it in an authentic way.

I'm always shook up and nervous and I've got the hospital record to prove it.

I don't really like hospitals that much. People are sick; sometimes it can be depressing. There's people going through a lot of pain in there. It has that funny smell.

I don't want fear or cancer to define me, but it's always in the back of your mind.

I hadn't accepted he was seriously ill. The idea that someone so close to you couldn't wake up was utterly incomprehensible. Then the doctor came in... Maurice had no brain left. There wasn't any activity at all.

I think I definitely got scared by the second or third time a doctor told me I was dying.

I tended to faint when I saw accident victims in the emergency ward, during surgery, or while drawing blood.

The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.

I am not frightened of much, but I wouldn't like to get ill.

The doctor told me, 'You have breast cancer.' I heard the cancer part first - it was only later that I heard the breast part. I couldn't believe it.

Everything was going for me, I didn't even know the meaning of the word insecurity and suddenly I am surrounded by words like operation, cancer, chemotherapy, radiation.

The moment my doctor told me, I went silent. My mum and dad were with me, then we all went to pieces. I was saying, No, I've got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I'm getting on a plane.

You hear the word 'cancer,' it scares you. You think of death.

But when I came back into the city for the first time last November, I thought every truck, every building was going to blow up. It has truly changed me something fierce.

When you get told that you have a disease, it's like: 'Really? Nah, it's all right. I don't believe that. It must be something else, I'm just making an excuse, let me push harder.'

Being diagnosed with cancer is terrifying.