Danielle van ‘t Schip on cancer diagnosis: ‘I thought about muscle tear’

Danielle has been writing a book for a few years now, when it will finally be ready at the end of 2021. “I came back from Greece in a lot of pain. I actually thought I had a pulled muscle… For three years I sat down a lot to write my book and sometimes I forgot to move. When I finished the book, I started swimming. So fanatical, like I’m going to the Olympics.”

When he’s in the water in October and sees jellyfish, he says they make a strange movement. “That was the first time I thought: This pain is not good. And in mid-November it hit my leg so badly that I arrived in Holland like a kind of Manke Nelis. After New Year’s I decided to look at it. Also if I didn’t think the worst at all.”

When she gets her first MRI scan in April of 2022, it still seems innocent at first. “A sports doctor found out I had a pubic bone fracture. I thought, well, I finally know what it is. But the doctor was shocked, he said, ‘Someone who has this usually takes morphine to work. ‘”

Danielle is referred to an oncologist and receives devastating news: she has aggressive rectal cancer. “The pressure from the tumor caused that pubic bone fracture. There was also a smaller tumor in the bone. It was intense, because John’s sister died of colon cancer two years ago.”

Danielle has now undergone several radiation therapies and treatments, with success so far. “The fracture has healed, the tumor is no longer aggressive and is much smaller. Other than that, I’m clean, so it looks promising medically. I don’t look too far ahead, I try to live in the moment as much as possible. But my son is getting married at the end of next year and Dr. Vogl said I will definitely make it. And I hope I’m that old grandma after all!”