The Cortisol Diaries

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Showing posts from November, 2019

Birthday Broadcast

November 18, 2019

I turned the grand old age of 31 on Friday and celebrated it in typical 31-year-old fashion by going to a museum in the day followed by a nice meal in the evening. I can’t say I’m unhappy with how low key it was - it was an ideal day. I have to accept my age and who wants to go out in their 30’s and get smashed to start another year? Exactly. The thought of the hangover is enough to make me want an early night. Heston's best I was busy on the weekend as my mum was visiting but I thought for a late birthday event, I’d do something different. I was searching around activities in London and thought it would be nice to do something a little bit different and help out in the community and I found ... wait for it ... tree planting. What better way to spend a Saturday morning than with my mates, possibly in the rain, getting a bit muddy and off-setting some carbon, right? It’s hard to arrange a one-off event unless you are a corporation and I am yet to reach that level o...

The Cortisol Diaries

I’m Elliot, a 30 year old living in London who discovered in May 2018 that I have a ‘massive’ tumour in my adrenal gland with impact to the kidney and liver and additional lung metastasis (marking it as a Stage 4 cancer). This was confirmed as adrenal cortical carcinoma (ACC), a rare and aggressive disease that I have been told is highly likely to lead to my death. The Cortisol Diaries is the witty name I’ve given to this blog which documents my cancer journey.

It started off as a private diary entry of my thoughts and feelings about my diagnosis and my considerable struggle to process it mentally. Like most people I took to Google to find out as much as I could about the condition, but found a huge lack of peoples experiences online. So I thought it might be helpful to share what I’m going through. I‘ve never been one to post my life on social media but as the cliché goes, if it helps just one person who is going through something similar, then I will feel like it’s been a worthwhile share. It is also very helpful as an outlet for me, giving me some focus and helping me keep a sense of perspective. I am not a natural writer so it will likely be rambling, sporadic, muddled and dull, but hopefully also frank, honest, informative and (generally) positive.