Remission.

Ahhh remission, the best day of my life to date!

I'll never ever forget walking into the room and the doctor telling me those words 'no evidence of cancer'. It was so surreal I had to book another appointment just to clarify I was actually cancer free!

This was it, the start of the rest of my life!

Radiotherapy!

Radiotherapy is a completely different kettle of fish to chemotherapy, and I wasn't as nervous as I was to start chemo.

I arrived for my planning day and had my dashing mask made!!

I went down to have my 'tattoo' and meet the team.

The next day was my first radiotherapy session. It was completely fine and almost relaxing! The mask is completely moulded to your face and has holes in it so its not claustrophobic, the nursing team pop in and out and play music while you're in there and it lasts 5 minutes!

By about the second week the radiation was taking its toll, along with an hour journey to the hospital and back every day. My throat was burned and it was impossible to try an eat and drink anything, I survived on morphine and food supplement drinks for the remainder of the sessions.

After 15 sessions to the neck and chest and 3 to just the chest me and my mask strolled out of the Churchill Hospital hoping to never return again!

The dreaded ABVD

February 18th 2014 I woke up bricking it having no idea what to expect going in for my first round of chemotherapy.

I walked in to the unit and was greeted by the most amazing nurses I have ever met, even had my own little room with a TV (and more tea and coffee than I could ever need!).
The chemo itself took around 5 hours to go in, along with the anti sickness meds and saline solutions - a very boring day!

I didn't feel any different while the chemo was going in, only a small burning sensation in my veins that was sorted by a heat pad.

By the 4th round, the nurses were struggling to find a vein so a picc line was inserted into my arm, very painless and made chemo and bloods soooooooo much easier!!

My hair started to think about a month on so I decided to take control an brave the shave, I was surprised at how well I handed it and how much I enjoyed my little bald head!

For the first half of the ABVD I tolerated it quite well, only being sick a couple of times and still managing to work in between the 2 weekly infusions, however by the second half I started to fall, anxiety had taken over. I had to drag myself to chemo or be forced into going, I didn't eat and would spend my time under a blanket on the sofa hating life! It didn't help I had 2 broken arms and a broken leg.

Finally by around the 8th round I picked back up again with a bit of help from anti anxiety meds and managed to get through the rest of the chemo very well! By the last round I was moving house the day after my last infusion and carry all sorts of furniture!

That was my chemo done!! Just had to wait on a scan to confirm the ending. I had had scan half way through and it looked like my tumours were responding well, the one in my neck had completely gone and the one in my chest almost there, we were very confident I would be in remission and need no further treatment..... we were wrong!

The tumour in my chest was still there so radiotherapy was recommended to me to give the tumour a final push and get me into remission

Diagnosis.

Hey guys!!

I decided to do a blog to document my journey for myself, update my friends and family, and let others in the same situation see what the journey is like.

I will start from the beginning!

So, right back in August 2013 I noticed a small lump had appeared just above my collar bone on the left hand side, I hadn't been feeling too well so ignored it thinking I had a virus and my glands were up. However as the months went by I hadn't felt any better and the lump was growing. A friend of mine convinced me to go to see my GP and on January 2nd 2014 (the day after my 22nd birthday) I strolled into the doctors surgery ready to find out what was going on.
After being in the room for about 3 minutes, I knew something was wrong, the doctor called a nurse and 2 other GP's in to come and have a look at the lump. They requested I went t my local hospital to have some bloods taken that afternoon. While I was there I asked the GP what she thought the lump could be and her reply made me feel sick. She said 'my gut feeling is that its cancer'.

Then next few weeks passed by in a blur of appointments with various departments, cameras down my throat, biopseys, scans and surgery. Finally on February 12th 2014 I had a call from the Cancer Care Unit asking me to go in first thing the next morning.

I met with my consultant the next morning along with my key worker. They confirmed I had Stage 2b Hodgkin's Lymphoma. They found the lump in my neck was a secondary lump to a massive tumour in the chest, wrapped round the blood vessels of my heart. I was to start 6 cycles (12 rounds) of ABVD 5 days later.

FUCK!