In 1999 I was completing year 11 at high school. I was involved in many sports and doing pretty well at my studies. For quite a few months I had been feeling overwhelmingly tired and, though I couldn’t notice it, I was loosing a fair bit of weight. My mum was taking me to the doctors quite regularly and I was sent for many blood tests as the doctor thought I was suffering from glandular fever.
One day in modern history class I started getting a strong pain down my left arm and noticed I had a lump protruding out the left side of my neck – the swollen lymph node, I later found out, was pushing on my muscles thus causing the pain in my arm.
My mum was a teacher at my high school so I went straight to her and she took me to the GP again. Fortunately, this day my usual GP was not working and the doctor I saw sent me for more blood tests and a chest CT. It was the chest CT that showed many small lumps throughout my chest cavity and I was told I had Hodgkin Lymphoma. I was diagnosed at stage 2A.
I was apparently told that day that it was cancer however I either chose not to believe it or didn’t understand it actually was cancer until I was told by my Oncologist that I would go for a week of ‘work up’ (various tests and scans) before starting chemo!
I underwent six months of chemotherapy, sessions each fortnight throughout the first half of 2000 while I completed year 12. I had my chemo on a Friday so I only missed one day of school. For the first half of my treatment, I was back at school on the Monday. I didn’t fell sick and got quite cranky at people for fussing over me, especially when school offered me to do year 12 over two years – which I politely declined!
Towards the end of my treatment though the physical and emotional effects of the chemo started taking there toll – I can still smell ‘it’ when I go back for check ups!!
I was very fortunate as I was declared in remission after only 6 months of treatment. I have now been in remission for ten years. I finished year 12 and went straight to uni and completed a Social Work Degree. I have been working as a social worker since 2004 and currently work with spinal injured clients.
In hindsight, my diagnosis was massive, not only for me, but for my mum, my step dad, little sister, friends and family. I now understand how huge it was, especially for my mum, who was and continues to be the biggest support for me. At the time, I didn’t let myself think of it as a potentially life threatening diagnosis however I am very grateful at how lucky I was and thankful that my experience wasn’t much worse.
Today I am very happily married to Bernie and 3 months ago we had a beautiful baby boy – William.
