The charity that my brother is raising money for by doing this crazy race is one that has really helped me out in the past. While I was going through all my treatment, I don’t know what I would have done without them.
The work they do is incredible and anything you can give will help. So please, if you have the money, just click on the link and sponsor him whatever you can afford.
Thankyou.
So, we’ll start way back on the 17th. It was my one year ‘anniversary’ of my diagnosis and on the same day, I finished a newly released book by John Green called The Fault in Our Stars. It’s about a young girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster who Thyroid cancer which spread to her lungs. It’s about her life and how she copes with her illness, with falling in love and with losing people. It is a piece of young adult literature but I would recommend it. John Green is a fantastic author who manages to make you cry on one page and laugh the next. The book is devestating and funny and spoke so many words to me positive and negative. It also helped me to look at my life in a different way, being a cancer patient myself. Well, y’know, kinda anyway.
I went to see the team my surgeon who worked on my arm works with on the 16th because I have been having a few issues with the movement and feeling in my arm and hand, my mum was conscerened so took me to go see him. By that, I mean I spent almost £70 on a train ticket to get from university in Derby to London where I was picked up from the train station. All they could say without doing scans is that it ‘might be a problem with the radial nerve.
I had scans the week after, on the 23rd, one for my chest to check my lungs are okay (which they were last time, by the way) and one for my arm, so that was a fun day with a lot of waiting around and stuff… It wasn’t too bad but travelling from Derby to London once a week is time consuming for university and expensive.
Anyway, I have an appointment with my radiographer on Friday and I am pretty sure I’ll be getting the scan results back. I’m scared, I’m not going to lie.
I’m not a religious person but I believe in positive thinking so if you could all throw some positive vibes my way it would be very much appreciated.
A year ago today, the 17th, I was diagnosed with MPNST in my arm.
A YEAR ago.
How am I meant to feel about it, can someone please tell me?
In that year I’ve had MPNST in my lungs too…
It’s been a year, I just don’t know what to do with myself.
Please can someone tell me?
That’s my one year …’anniversary’… of my diagnosis… Not really sure what to do, how to feel or anything.
When it hurts to breath, having breath holding syndrome does not help.
I love this but there is one point that I really don’t agree with.
‘It cannot shatter hope.’
I wish that was the case but it really can.
(Source: moniquemrivera)
I travelled to London for a check-up after my operation and to find out what it was that they were removing. Turns out, it was actually cancer, the same type I had in my arm, MPNST, but it is all gone. I’m clear. They have discharged me for my lung now, they aren’t worried at all but I will still be going to check-ups for the next 9ish years.
Seeing the x-ray of what my lung now looks like is so weird. You can actually see how a section of it is missing and that the diaphragm has moved to accommodate it. It’s crazy.
But I’m happy that’s all over now. Finally.
2011 was a mental year for me. I got diagnosed right at the beginning of the year. The anniversary of that is little over 2 weeks away. I had my surgery a week after the diagnosis and started my radiotherapy in April. The 25th, I believe. Finished it in June, got over it, started to feel better and get on with my life then had an operation on my lung. It won’t be long now until I find out whether what was in my lung was cancer or not.
Y’know, you go forever thinking ‘this will never happen to me’ and then it does. Okay, fair enough, I have neurofibromatosis (nf) type 1 which does increase the likelihood of me having cancer but for years, until my diagnosis, I was fed the wrong information about nf, being told the type I have doesn’t cause cancerous tumours. Obviously it does.
2011 showed me how strong I can really be and I love the year for that. But honestly, if I could go back and do it all again and avoid the whole cancer thing, I would. Although, if you look at statistics, if it wasn’t me who had the cancer it would be someone else who might not have been able to cope. So, I guess, in that respect, I would rather me than anyone else.
Cancer is a horrible thing but let’s be glad that 2011 is over so we can start new, fresh and stronger than ever before.
I really love every single one of you who follows this blog, okay there aren’t many of you but I still love that you care enough to follow it and keep up-to-date with my progress so yeah, thankyou.
Hey guys, sorry it has taken me so long to update you on what has happened but I am safe, and well and alive so no need to worry.
I had my operation almost 3 weeks ago now, I had a lobectomy on my right lung. To explain, each lung is split into 3 lobes and because of the size of the tumour in my lung, I had to have the bottom lobe (1/3 of my lung) removed during the operation. So now I have 1 and 2/3 of a lung. It hasn’t actually effected my breathing as much as I thought it would but by now, I would have hoped that my breathing was pretty much back to normal.
When I woke up from the operation, I was taken to the High Dependency Unit (HDU) just so I could be looked after properly. I was in a lot of pain while I was in there, the first couple of days after the operation and I had patient control medication, which was morphine. That caused me to find out that morphine makes me sick.
Opposite me, while I was on that ward, was a man that was very loud and confused. He was loud all day and all night which made it really difficult for me to get any rest or attention from my nurse because this man required 24/7 attention really but wasn’t given it.
Anyway, after a couple of days in the HDU, I was moved onto a regular ward which my physiotherapist walked with me to. Walking there was difficult and left me in pain but it was good to be able to walk. After a couple of days on the ward, I got the drains taken out which was a bit painful but I felt better for having them out. I then got all the cannulas I had in out and each day, I had x-rays tomake sure everything was going well. On the Sunday after I was admitted, I got discharged, so I spent a week in the hospital.
I got driven home by my dad and have been resting up and easing off of my pain killers which is also making me feel better.
So yeah, I’m home, feeling pretty good and doing pretty well.
I know a lot of people feel a ‘connection’ with people who have cancer if they do too but I don’t really have that. I mean, I quite like talking to survivors and all that and I like to talk to people going through the same thing as me, I just don’t really feel a connection, maybe I would if I had ever met someone who had/has the same type as me but I haven’t.
I also don’t like it when people tell you that you’re going to be okay and don’t give you room to voice any worries you might have.
