It was close to midnight on June 20, and I was lying in a bed on the Riverside ward of London’s Charing Cross Hospital. The day before, a tumor had been removed from my colon in a six-and-a-half-hour operation. My surgeon, Mr. Paul Ziprin, the lead for colorectal cancer at the Imperial Healthcare hospitals in London, had assured me that everything had gone well. My boyfriend, David, shared the positive news with our friends on WhatsApp.
Unfortunately, this optimism was premature.