Cancer: A Sister’s Perspective

I’ll never forget it… the text I received from my sister on the 15th May 2018: ‘I’m going to the Horton right now, I have an enlarged lymph node in my chest, it could be lymphoma.’ What? How is that possible? She’s 20 years old, she’s too young to get cancer and not my sister… …

Being Told You Have Cancer

It begins with waiting... hoping that it's good news or no news. Staring at the four walls of an empty doctors clinic with chairs circled around a table filled with old magazines. Biting your nails until there's nothing left, and bopping your leg up and down to cure the anxious feeling in your stomach, but …

Getting Through Chemo: Tips

Chemotherapy is bloody hard, isn't it? It's unfortunate that to destroy a cancerous tumour, we sometimes have to insert toxic chemicals into our body. We must be living the dream. The sessions of chemotherapy are bad enough, but the struggles afterwards can sometimes be even worse. So let's welcome 2019 with my tips of getting …

Chemotherapy: The Fourth

This chemotherapy was a little different. I was no longer having chemotherapy at The Churchill hospital, I have moved to a little chemotherapy centre in my town. They have one haematologist on the ward, so as long as my chemotherapy is on the same day she is in, I can go ahead with it. I …

Chemotherapy: Three’s A Crowd

My third chemotherapy was at The Churchill and this time I was upgraded to the big recliner chairs - get in! It was a long wait before they even started the chemotherapy, they looked really busy and a few nurses were dotted around attending to people. I didn't mind the wait, I had brought a …

Give The Gift Of Blood

Christmas is the time of gift giving and surrounding yourself with family and people you love. I love buying people presents, because I love seeing the joy on someones face when they're opening their present. Have you ever thought about giving the gift of blood? I'm not saying you should cut yourself open and spew …

Cancer and Loneliness: Meet Eva!

It's common to experience loneliness when you're going through cancer, it's an extremely difficult time. Whether you're being diagnosed, going through treatment or you've finished cancer treatment altogether... cancer can make you feel really isolated. There isn't a total quick fix for this, but there are a few things you can do to help yourself. …

Bald and Beautiful

Let's really talk about losing hair... (or click here to watch the video) When I was told I was going to have chemotherapy, they walked me through what each drug is and what each one does. In one of the R-CHOP chemotherapy drugs, there's one particular one that causes your hair to fall out, personally …

24 Hour Heart Tape Monitoring

My 24 hours heart monitoring experience was for my SVT, which was diagnosed half way through my chemotherapy. I know, aren't I lucky? Anyway, they wanted to see what my heart does in the short window of 24 hours. It was a five minute appointment, where they stuck the wires around my chest on various …

Chemotherapy: It Takes Two

My RCHOP chemotherapy was scheduled for every two weeks. Normally, the average person who has this type of chemotherapy will have it every three weeks but as my mass was quite big, and growing by the second, they didn't want to give it a single chance to grow any further. It was a plan. My …