A woman who suffered from a serious health condition in her twenties now struggles to hold down a job eight years after her treatment – and says it’s through no fault of her own
A woman who bravely battled brain cancer in her twenties now struggles to hold down a job due to the long-lasting effects of her treatment.
At just 26 years of age, Linda Loprasert was told she had a brain tumour after noticing she was becoming extremely forgetful and started to hallucinate.
Despite being cancer-free, Linda says she is now failing to return to work and has been fired from jobs 14 times due to the long-lasting effects of her tumour that has severely impacted her memory. She says it takes ‘just a day’ for companies to realise she has memory issues.
“I knew something was wrong back in 2014 when I started to have severe memory issues. My manager at work once used to call me an elephant because I would remember everything – but soon I was forgetting even the simplest tasks,” she tells The Metro. When Linda was told she had cancer, she recalls the moment she was told and says it was “surreal” but was told the tumour she had was “highly receptive” to treatment.
“Thankfully, my treatment was successful, and after 18 months of chemotherapy and radiation, I was overjoyed to be cancer-free. Yet life after brain cancer has been anything but easy. To this day, roughly eight years post-treatment, I’ve been unsuccessful in re-entering the workforce – though not from lack of trying.”
Before her diagnosis, Linda was a client services executive who was also able to “recall sales at the drop of a hat,” but she says the tumour put a halt to that and started to affect her memory. However, once she had the all-clear and tried to get back into work, it wasn’t as easy as she had anticipated.
During the interview process, she didn’t let any of the companies know of her former brain cancer over fear that she’d be instantly dismissed before evening meeting her. “In four of those workplaces, I was employed for only one day,” she said. “That’s all it took for them to realise that there was something wrong with my memory.”
She claims she feels like she was never given a “chance to succeed” and says that not only has her work prospects been impacted, but her personal relationships have also “suffered”. She claims that her damaged memory means people get “annoyed” at her repeating herself, asking the same questions and forgetting information.
To try and help herself, she now takes down notes and writes a to-do list every day to follow to ensure she doesn’t forget. She has also written a book called ‘Memory Fail’ which details her whole cancer journey as well as life post cancer, hoping to show other brain cancer patients that they are not alone in their struggles.
Do you have a story to share? Email niamh.kirk@reachplc.com
