My dad was suffering with cancer for six years and my mum was in coma for three-and-a-half months. So, I have seen the hospital life.
My jaw has been wired and rewired. It's incredible to think people would fake that.
In 2003, I had testicular cancer, and I didn't tell anyone about it - maybe five people. I had a fairly significant surgery. I was weak, slumped over. I told people at work I'd been in an accident.
I've had more than 200 stitches, only in the area of the eyes.
They've put skin from my arm on my ankle and from my thigh on my arm. So whenever I get asked what's happened to me, I end up saying it's like a little jigsaw, parts of my body all over the place.
I was angry at my parents when I had to have brain surgery, that they weren't still around, because no matter how old you are you want you parents when you're going through something like that.
I was only 13 years old when I was forced to face the fragility of my own life. A routine surgery landed me in a medically induced coma for two weeks with a mere 1% chance of surviving. But survive I did.
Everyone I tell that I had an aneurysm always says, 'Oh, my cousin died from that.' Well, I didn't, so I'm amazed. I was in a wheelchair, and I had to go to rehab. And now I'm walking!
Before I had a double mastectomy, I was already pretty flat-chested, and I made so many jokes over the years about how small my chest was that I started to think that maybe my boobs overheard me... and were just like, 'You know what? We're sick of this. Let's kill her.'
Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.
I am completely pissed off that I'm circumcised.
Doctor just told me I can't have kids. I asked for a second opinion. He said, Why? No one's gonna to let you take kids from this hospital.
I was terrified of getting the chemo. It's not pleasant. And the radiation is not pleasant.
If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than your head.
My mother was a trained nurse, and she'd tell me that patients would fight as they were administered anaesthetic, grappling to get the gas mask off their face.
The diagnosis was immediate: Masses matting the lungs and deforming the spine. Cancer. In my neurosurgical training, I had reviewed hundreds of scans for fellow doctors to see if surgery offered any hope. I'd scribble in the chart 'Widely metastatic disease - no role for surgery,' and move on. But this scan was different: It was my own.
Mum was in her early 50s when she had four strokes in quick succession that almost took her off. I'd just come down from Cambridge with a rubbish degree. I spent a year reading to her - her eyesight was badly affected - and making sure she got proper rest. It was a special time but very intense, too.
Chemo is awful!
We were led to a pediatric ophthalmologist. It's a hard date for me, April 14, 1998. The doctor came back from the examining room and told us she had tumors in both eyes.
I can't keep track of my hospital time. It all sort of blurs together.
To say that losing your pancreas is a sad thing is not an overstatement. They had to take my pancreas away, my duodenum, and it's damaged for ever.
I unfortunately had a lot of medical procedures throughout my life, so I decided to paint all of my surgeries as a way to heal and as a way to grow.
To be 26 years old and lose your left heart ventricle was probably the most dramatic thing that's ever happened to me in my life...
The amount of surgeries I've had are absolutely minimal compared to the reconstructive surgeries I've had. Probably 300.
The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn't have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places?
