Katharina Buczek
This 34-year-old woman believes that she has always just been a “filler person.” When she was younger, her parents clearly had favorites– with her mom favoring her younger sister and her dad favoring her younger brother.
Then, when it came to friends, she felt like she was always ignored in group settings. This happened at work, too, and coworkers would seemingly disregard her– even forgetting her birthday.
She did not get asked out on dates a lot, either. And sadly, since this disregard has been such a common theme in her life, she has just gotten used to it.
“As a result of being this agreeable, filler, boring person, I think the people around me don’t realize that I’m a real person who has needs like everyone else,” she said.
One prime example of this was when she began feeling chest pain and coughing constantly. The few people she spoke to about this issue all told her that it wasn’t a big deal and believed she would be fine. They claimed that, since she had never complained in the past, she would be okay.
She really took this to heart, too, and second-guessed telling anyone that she didn’t feel great. She even began wondering if she had made the condition up in her head.
“It took me a long time to actually tell the doctor my symptoms because I thought I was overreacting,” she recalled.
“But I had to get checked out.”
Well, she wound up being diagnosed with Stage 2 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
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