Before diving into the specifics of my treatment regimen, I think it’s worth covering some of the basics about cancer treatment. It’s an extremely complex topic, as I’ve come to find out, but sticking with a general overview should be sufficient for the sake of this post. The first thing to know when it comes to cancer treatment is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

I mentioned in my previous article and on my GoFundMe page that I’ve been officially diagnosed with a type of cancer called metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), but what the heck does that actually mean? In this article I describe my particular type of cancer in greater detail, because not all cancer is created equally.

The past few months of my life have been a whirlwind. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how all of this happened and how I went from working aboard a ship in Svalbard to receiving cancer treatment back home. Rather than trying to explain it piecemeal, I put together a comprehensive timeline of the events that brought me to where I am today.