When I browse through the discussion groups on community forums for people dealing with cancer, I read about cancer survivors taking years to pen their stories, or extensive durations of time to work through the memories of the ordeal, the challenge, the pain, both emotional and physical, that they went through before expressing it all in print.

I, on the other hand, probably because the written word is so dear to me, because I enjoy writing so much, had consistently written about my experience throughout the last year and more, albeit in fragments, mainly to friends and family as email updates in response to all the well wishes that I so fortunately received. Writing has always been my therapy, and communication to my loved ones was as effective a patient journal as writing to myself, if not more uplifting.

It's been over a year and half since September, 2007, and I want to summarily review what happened, this time of my life that I coin 'cancer circus'. It's been on my subconscious to-do-list all this time, marinading more each night I lay my head on the pillow, gathering more layers each commute on the subway. As therapy. Before I forget. For posterity.

Fasten your seat belts.

The first indication of me being symptomatic, I remember, was PT observing how my face was the roundest he had ever seen under the trilby hat I wore to the Shanghai Contemporary of 2007, which took place the first week of September. He thought I had just been for a hair cut, and that he was being remiss in remarking it, as I often berate him for not noticing.

I also recall some time after that, an intimate encounter left me quite literally breathless. He was of average height and build, but his body that so ordinarily weighed upon my chest had me feeling crushed and suffocating, so much that we had to stop. Hot and heavy indeed, but definitely not sexy. When I saw my reflection in the mirror, I was deeply flushed, swollen along my jaw line, down my neck and chest.

I remember as well, prior to that, from August, every morning as I stepped out of the shower, I started feeling a tightness around my chest, a heaviness that made it difficult to breathe. It was very obviously a physical feeling, but I had attributed it to the devastated, distraught state of mind I was in. My emotions were entangled amidst despair and disappointment resulting from hurtful, disloyal acts of betrayal from people I had considered friends. I cried for two weeks, my chest heaved, but the physical pain was masked by the unbearably overwhelming emotional distress. My heart was broken, I told myself, and was convinced that I was experiencing psychosomatic symptoms. Melodramatic, as usual. Mind over matter, as I am living proof.

From an email I wrote during this episode, 'Tomorrow I shall wake up without the lump in my throat, and will breathe freely again.'

Ironically, my horoscope for that week:

Don't cling. Don't be grasping or anxious. Instead, do what is potentially every Scorpio's specialty: Die and be reborn every day. Again and again, kill off the magic that's working so well and artfully resurrect it in a transformed version.

By mid-September, I accepted that I was physically unwell, but remained unalarmed. My face was engorged, my chest congested, my neck had grown to a trunk, and I was physically exhausted, all classic symptoms of thoracic tumours. However, growing up under the loving, doting care of parents who are also medical professionals, I had always taken my health for granted. Except for a deep cut on my shin that required stitching and antibiotics (and only received an alcoholic swab and bandage since I was unperturbed), I never sought medical assistance throughout my seven years in Shanghai. And since I was soon joining my parents in Hong Kong to set off to Europe together for our family reunion in the Mediterranean arranged long ago, I knew I could consult my father soon enough about my inflated face.

Dad had already scheduled for the X-ray and CT scan for me that afternoon I arrived in Hong Kong. As I moved between the machines in the lab, I heard hushed conversations between my father and the lab technicians, discretely discussing the foreboding, instantaneous results. He wore an expression that was solemn, but restrained enough for me to read concern through his eyes. He wore that look on several occasions in the months to come. I understood not to question at that point, but to wait until we were alone. If I am perceived by some as impatient, I behaved then as I always expected myself would in times of adversity: calm and collected. Was I afraid? No, my father is here, I will be fine.

I got into the car before Dad did, and the fact that he stalled to finish the phone conversation with Mom before getting in himself was ominous. He was aware I was watching him from the front passenger seat, confused. When is it acceptable for a doctor to disclose information of a patient with his wife before he does so to the patient? When the patient is their child, even if the child is an able adult of 31 years old.

I had not yet begun my questions before Dad's phone rang again. It was a doctor, a peer, returning his call. Dad had tried to reach him for a referral for a thoracic specialist. I hadn't even heard of that label before that moment. He rang off with banter and conversation, responding that we won't be boarding the flight to Venice the following day to get on that cruise. Bless my father, he never knew how to avoid telling it straight up.

We're not leaving tomorrow? No, there appears to be a tumour in your chest. We are seeing a thoracic specialist tomorrow morning at nine o'clock.

The shock sank in only then. But only the part that I was not well enough to travel. Why can't we go on the cruise and then come back and see the specialist? I tried to insist. All I could think of was my mother's cruise-planning efforts for the last six months, and all of us scheduling our lives separately in Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, and Sydney to make this happen, so that we can get on a boat and sail through the Greek Islands. But Ann and Joey really want to go, too. It's not fair for them. I pleaded. Dad was gentle, as he always is, and assured me that if there's nothing of concern after seeing the specialist, then we will be traveling very soon.

I wasn't unsettled throughout the ride home, just a little surreal, still trying to wind my head around the idea that we were not getting on a plane the next day. It was only when I saw my mother, her face flushed from crying, that I realised the gravity of the situation. She was on the phone with Ann in London, and handed over the handset. I'm sorry, Ann! I really wish we were going on the cruise. Oh, you're coming here instead? You don't have to. I'm sure I'll be fine. I was still feeling guilty from derailing everyone's plans and even tried to persuade her not to come, she might want to use the leave she applied for from work to go somewhere else. She was adamant, though, and rightly so. I would not have made it without my family around me.

When Mom held me, I cried, because she was crying, too. I apologised again for ruining our travel plans, and she, too, reassured me that we are only postponing our plans for now. My parents and I sat down and tried to digest the information before us. There is a mass in my chest, the size of a tennis ball. It appears to be located between the lungs, where the thymus is. There were questions, of course, but they were held back, like inquisitive paparazzi cordoned off by common sense not to invade my composure with their freneticism. I didn't see the point of histrionics when we didn't have all the facts required to react.

Dinner that night was the epitome of the calm before the storm — we were a reality show that was too practical or too civilised to bring in the ratings. We wondered whether my brother, Joey, was on board a flight to Venice via Dubai, since we had not been able to reach him. We ran through the list of hotels and agents that needed to be contacted for our derailment due to 'sudden, unforeseen personal circumstances', in Prague, St Petersburg. We discussed matter-of-factly what time we would be setting out in the morning for the early appointment with the specialist, and the route to take to the hospital. If there were tension or apprehension in the air, I didn't feel it. I wanted answers, and they'd just better be good, or bad, for us to miss the damned cruise. And the Burj in Dubai.

I slept soundly that night. I know I dreamt, but of what, I don't recall.

Highlights: Cancer Talk