I got a tattoo. Now, where I live, that probably isn’t newsworthy. In my own life, however, it deserves a headline right up there with Breast Cancer and Becoming a Social Worker.Mainly because, in my family, tattoos are completely uncharted territory. Even the family black sheep never ventured this far. I’m still trying to decide… Read more: The Tattoo

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood? The Antikvárium.hu watermark at the bottom of the image is a pretty good indication of just how far back I had to dig into my memory to find Nyasszu and Tavi’s adventures. And while I was at it, I discovered something else: the book was actually written… Read more: Nyasszu, Childhood Trauma, and the Softening of Generations

What quality do you value most in a friend? I value many different qualities in people. What I love most is how differently wonderful people can be. Of course, they can be differently awful too—but that is a story for another day. I am drawn to the beauty in the personalities of the people I… Read more: Why Is Loyalty the Most Important Quality in a Friend?

What jobs have you had? When people ask what jobs I’ve had, I never know where to begin. Technically, these were only my summer jobs. Unofficially, they were an education in human nature, tax evasion, counterfeit goods, workplace paranoia, and the curious ways adults justify exploiting teenagers. I grew up by Lake Balaton, Hungary’s favourite… Read more: My Teenage Career at Lake Balaton: Child Labour, Counterfeit Jewellery and Other Summer Adventures

One radiotherapy session left. Luckily, there was no nasty surprise. Everything unfolded exactly the way they predicted—if anything, probably on the most favourable end of what they expected. Only in the last few days did I start noticing some redness, almost like mild sunburn. To be fair, I’d been diligently covering myself in Aveeno and… Read more: Radioliday- The Home Stretch

Have you ever broken a bone? Almost. From the very beginning of school, I envied the kids who showed up with a cast. They’d walk into class carrying heroic stories about bikes, trees, roller skates, bunkbeds, football matches gone wrong. Usually after spending a glorious few days at home recovering. They wore bright white plaster… Read more: The Day I Prayed for a Broken Bone

What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today? My smile. “A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone.” — Og Mandino So I’ll keep smiling, whatever happens. Not as fake positivity. Just because a smile costs me nothing, and it might make someone’s day a little lighter. 💖

Halfway through. Or maybe already past it. The child swap has happened too. I handed over an exhausted Amina and received an enthusiastic, energetic Zaki in return. The only problem is that my own battery isn’t just empty anymore — it’s running on fumes, loaded with radiation, worn down by everything that came before it,… Read more: Radioliday- halfway update

Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life. There are people who shape the very foundation of who we become — our families, the environments we grow up in, the people closest to us in our early years. They become woven into us almost instinctively, and our deepest emotions are… Read more: Everyday Heroes

What does freedom mean to you? I think freedom is, in many ways, the perception of your choices. How free you feel often depends on how much you believe you are able to make the decisions you truly want for yourself. To me, freedom is ultimately a deeply subjective experience. I remember that years ago,… Read more: The Subjective Nature of Freedom

The surgery was scheduled for early morning. That sounded wonderful, considering I hadn’t been allowed to eat since the previous evening. I assumed that if my letter said to arrive at 8:30, they would probably wheel me in around 9. Brilliant. No time to overthink anything. As you can probably guess by now, that was… Read more: Breast Cancer Surgery (Part 2)- On the Day of the Operation

What is your career plan I feel very fortunate to have a career where I can genuinely see, understand, and feel that my work has meaning and value. That sense of purpose has always been important to me. At the same time, cancer taught me that my wellbeing cannot come second to achievement. One of… Read more: Career Plan After Breast Cancer

Four days into radiotherapy and I’ve already become so used to it that tomorrow, when I don’t have treatment, I might actually miss it a little. The people at the Marsden are genuinely lovely, and very obviously know what they’re doing. The ones operating the radiation machines are called radiographers, right? I’m terrible at the… Read more: Radioliday Update

7 a.m. flight.The insomniac’s favorite kind—because at that point, there’s really no reason to even go to bed. But I had to be at the hospital by 11, so there wasn’t much choice. Chelsea, baby, here we come. In the end, I decided not to do this alone. After last year’s spectacular disappointment—when “holiday” turned… Read more: Radioliday

List the people you admire and look to for advice… Take the Boat: The Mistake We Make When Waiting for Answers At the moment, I have two answers to the question of who I admire and ask for advice. The first group is made up of people I genuinely admire—those whose entire lifestyle, or at… Read more: Take the Boat: The Mistake We Make When Waiting for Answers

4 a.m. I woke up at four in the morning. It felt strange—like I had just escaped a nightmare. My heart was racing, I was hyperventilating, completely drenched in sweat… but I couldn’t remember the dream. Which was unusual. Nightmares, as luck would have it, I usually remember in full detail. Anyway. I’ve never been… Read more: How to Diagnose Yourself at 4am

What gives you direction in life? Intuition, gut feeling, inspiration, divine power, sixth sense, universal energy, God… Are they all just different names for the same thing we feel, shaped by our beliefs? For me, it is a whisper — one I can only hear when I manage to quiet my mind. Sometimes I don’t… Read more: Learning to Listen to the Whisper

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often? (Daily prompt) You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not? George Bernard Shaw There’s a quote that first caught hold of me in my younger years, and it has stayed with… Read more: I Dream Things and Say Why Not?

Have you ever been camping? The first time I ever went “camping” happened sometime in the mid-90s. I must have been around ten or eleven, and it was a hot summer at Lake Balaton. I was spending the long school holidays at my grandparents’, and right next door lived my best friend. This was before… Read more: Terror in the tent

If the fight against breast cancer were a sport, I think—despite the word “fight”—it wouldn’t resemble boxing at all. It would be much closer to a pentathlon. Boxing, and similar combat sports, rely largely on a specific kind of physical strength, along with technique and speed. A pentathlon, on the other hand, demands that competitors… Read more: About breast cancer surgery (part one) -Pentathlon to the Power of Ten

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out? The last time I took a risk, I lost something precious. Yet I gained something far more valuable—my own respect for choosing what felt right. To me, a decision isn’t only about the outcome. It’s about defining your own journey and… Read more: Beyond the outcome-reflection

When I finished Epirubicin, everyone seemed very happy about it. Lots of “well done” and “you got through the hard part.”This is usually the exact moment when I start getting suspicious that something’s not quite right. Not that the world is out to trick me, and I never really warmed up to a paranoia diagnosis,… Read more: About Chemotherapy (Part 4) – Paclitaxel, the Sneaky One

Epirubicin (EC) The infamous “red devil” was the main character in my first four chemo cycles. As I’ve already mentioned, it stands out with its horrifying nature even within the already unpopular chemo lineup. For me, the pre-medication phase with EC was completely uneventful and free of discomfort—although, to be fair, I was suffering so… Read more: About Chemotherapy (part3)- Facing the devil

Before the Chemotherapy Session Before starting chemotherapy, blood was taken every time to check whether the body and immune system were strong enough for the treatment and free of infection. Depending on the type of chemo, this was done either a few days before or even half an hour to an hour before the treatment.… Read more: About chemotherapy (part 2)-Preparation, Cold Cap, Neuropathy Prevention

What I see is that most people who are diagnosed with cancer consider chemotherapy to be one of the most frightening treatments. That’s not without reason—after all, it’s a toxin that affects not only a person’s general wellbeing, but also drastically reduces resistance to infections, leads to visible physical changes, and can have long-term consequences.… Read more: About Chemotherapy (Part 1): Fear, Decisions & My Port Experience

If you ask cancer survivors what the worst part of their story was, many will say the moment of diagnosis. For me, it was much more the eight weeks that followed — a stretch I wouldn’t relive even in my worst nightmares. If we compare cancer to a roller coaster — and so far I… Read more: Welcome to the Cancer Ghost Ride

It was early July 2025. I was eagerly awaiting the holiday in Hungary I had booked with the children. I had been dieting since February so that I could stroll along the beach at Lake Balaton with a peaceful heart, and by then I had achieved quite beautiful results. I admired myself in the mirror… Read more: Diagnosis: Inadequate, Even in the Face of Cancer

Valentine’s Day started like an average Saturday.I could also say it started out averagely annoying. Despite having been awake until the middle of the night, I woke up early in the morning to find that I couldn’t feel my left arm—the one I was lying on. I rolled over to the other side, but barely… Read more: My Valentine