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I feel I lost my innocence to cancer.

I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved.

I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward, my first instinct was to withdraw from what was going on - the complexity, the death. It was a very bleak time.

I have been unexpectedly confronted with my own mortality as I was told that I had cancer.

Cancer is cancer. I've got a great life if I can just stay alive.

I would never call myself a cancer survivor because I think it devalues those who do not survive. There's this whole mythology that people bravely battle their cancer and then they become survivors. Well, the ones who don't survive may be just as brave, you know, just as courageous, wonderful people.

If I've learned anything, it's to live in the moment, and the gift that cancer gives you is, you just assume I'm only here today, and I am going to seize that moment and cherish it.

When they tell you that you have cancer, you panic.

It was a fine cancer experience, as cancer experiences go.