“ In 2014 I was diagnosed with breast cancer”

 In my life I have been struggling with many problems. But the biggest one was my cancer. In 2014 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. At that time I lived in Holland and was all by myself. No kids and no husband or boyfriend, so it was and still is very lonely. The treatment was painful. I couldn't work for almost a year, all I did was being at home or in the hospital for treatment. I still have cancer but I take medicine, go on surveys every fourth month  where they measure my legs and many other things. So it is still a struggle and always stressful because I need a health declaration every year that says that I am healthy.

In all this anxiety and stress I have one thing that always matters no matter what makes me happy and that is cykling. I have lived much in the swiss alps and nature has always been my playground for as long as i remember. I climb and ski a lot but my passion is cykling.

I have always loved biking from school and work and to the store. In Switzerland in general it's very popular to bike more than you walk, especially in the Alps. I have so many bikes and every bike has its own history.

My most loving bike is the one I bought right after I was declared healthy. It was very expensive but i love it so much.

And my job includes moving alot and in all the places I have lived it has been easier to cycle than running for example, so that's why my passion for cycling is still alive.

I know a lot of people that are struggling with depression or any other type of mental illness including me. And I also met many people when I needed my treatment for cancer that has become depressed because of the disease. And that is very normal. There were many specialists for mental illness in the hospital that helped you on the way out of the illness but you can never heal from an experience like that.

In Sweden, it is very common to talk about mental illness.But since I work for a company that is foreign, it is not at all as common to talk about it. And it is usual to hear people talk about people that are sick leave but it’s never like they ask how everyone is doing. And that is very hard because it is common to move to my job, many people live alone without children and a partner. This is what my and many others' lives look like in this industry. This means that many feel lonely. Often, many people take sick leave because they cannot manage to go through everything in their lives alone. But that is never anything we talk about at work. For me I feel like it’s important to ask how everybody is doing and if i’m lucky i get a better understanding and contact with that person but also a different point of view of how the person is private. 

And especially now with the pandemic and everything I think that everyone feels a little bad.

Mavi 9a