“I chose to take matters into my own hands and do my own research, and the more research I did, the more I found out that there were opportunities for me to pursue before I threw in the towel and accepted my fate.”
A lifetime of cancer diagnoses
Before Allen experienced any form of health problems, he says he lived a privileged life as a teenager. He suffered the loss of a sibling in a car accident, but before that, he was a happy-go-lucky person living a typical teenage life.
Three years after his sibling’s death, he received more terrible news. At 20, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was treated “exclusively with radiation therapy” around his head, neck, chest, and abdomen.
At the time, he was told that even if the radiation worked for his current cancer, it did increase the risk of another developing down the line, along with other forms of health issues. The life-saving therapy was worth the risk at the time, and Allen threw himself into his professional career because he wanted to “experience what life had to offer” while he still had the time to do so.
Fortunately, Allen recovered from his Hodgkin’s lymphoma and continued his work in the marketing and communications industry. He lived a relatively everyday life, working in his chosen career path, getting married and starting a family, and then becoming a single father who co-parented his two children after a divorce.