After the birth of my son I started experiencing excruciatingly painful headaches coupled with visual disturbances, though I didn’t seek any medical help at the time. My reason for this is because I was still solely breastfeeding, and I just assumed I wasn’t drinking enough water and the headaches were a result of dehydration.  I also put  the headaches down to a lack of sleep and stress from my deteriorating relationship with my son’s father. 

After 6 months of headaches, which were getting stronger and were by then almost everyday, I went to see my optician as I thought I might need stronger reading glasses or to wear glasses full time.  After the examination my optician told me the area around the retinal nerve at the back of both of my eyes was significantly swollen, she wrote me out a referral for A&E and told me to go straight away.  Luckily my mum was with me and we went straight to Worcester Royal Hospital, our local hospital.  Several doctors and an ophthalmologist took a look at the back of my eyes in A&E, I was transferred to a ward and kept in for observation overnight, they sent me for a head CT the following morning but I was sent home by a junior doctor who believed I was fine.

The day after I was sent home I received a call from the hospital and told to come straight back into the hospital and go to the medical assessment unit where a doctor, who sat me down in the middle of a busy hall way rather than a side room, told me the CT showed a unknown shadow on my brain which was about 4cm in diameter in the right temporal lobe with a large amount of swelling around it.  I was started on steroids right there and then to bring the swelling down and sent for an MRI to determine if it was a solid mass or a cyst. Then I was admitted to the medical short stay unit as there was a risk I might have an epileptic fit or loose consciousness.  The next day I was told the MRI showed the shadow was a solid mass, which was most likely a tumour.  The doctor told me they had called the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and I was on the high priority list for a bed on the neurological ward.  

I was transferred after 8 nights in Worcester and spent 9 days in hospital in Birmingham, then on the 14th of July 2004 at 4.10pm in the afternoon I kissed my 6 month old son and my mum goodbye, told them they would see me again before they had a chance to miss me and that I‘d breeze through surgery no problems at all, and was wheeled into surgery.  The operation took 3 hours and involved them removing a piece of my skull and cutting through the jaw muscle to excise the tumour, and as I‘d told mum there were no complications and all went smoothly. 

The day after surgery I immediately felt like my old self and all symptoms disappeared, though I still had to take steroids for a few weeks to combat swelling from the surgery and I was started on anti-convulsion medication, which I’d take for at least a year and I was told I still may experience epileptic fits as a side effect of the surgery, though I‘d never had one in my life.

I was discharged 4 days after surgery, assuring my doctors every day after surgery I was fine and could stay at my mum’s house, where I had my step dad, a nurse, and my mum, also a healthcare professional, to look after me and my son.  After two weeks recuperating at my mum’s house I went back to the hospital to have my staples removed and was given the diagnosis of the biopsy, I was told it was a stage one Ganglio-glioma but that the surgeon was confident that the tumour was completely removed and I wouldn’t need any chemo or radiotherapy.  This came as a huge relief as at the time I was more afraid of chemo and loosing my hair than I was afraid of the thought of having potentially fatal the brain surgery, though I still lost about ¼ of my hair.  I was referred to an oncologist and had monthly check-ups and 3 monthly, then 6 monthly scans for a while.  I'm told Ganglio-glioma is a rare type of cancer representing 0.4% of adult cancer and that it is unlikely to metastasize to other parts of the body.  My doctors believe that the tumour had started to grow during childhood but my pregnancy and the raised oestrogen levels acted as a catalyst and the tumour grew large enough to cause symptoms.

I was fine mentally and psychologically the whole time I was in hospital and never feared for my life, but about 3 months after surgery the reality of what had happened hit home and I found every day tasks difficult as I would cry my eyes out at the silliest thing and began having disturbing dreams where my son was the one being diagnosed and the terrifying thought he might have inherited the gene for the type of cancer I had and would get sick and experience the pain I did too.  My GP diagnosed depression, he prescribed anti-depressants and but I was only sent for one counselling session.  Though at that counselling session I received an excellent piece of advise that is now a sort of mantra for me.  The counsellor told me that I should understand that “right now today I was ok and my son was ok“, he said “don’t worry or and try not to get stressed about what may or may not happen” and that I “would never forget that the tumour could come back but that it would get easier to deal with and less painful with time“.  I took the anti-depressants for 6 months until I finally felt I had overcome the crushing anxiety and fear I felt every time I thought about the cancer.

I’m now about to turn 23 and since the surgery I have had several scans to make sure the tumour hasn’t grown back and as yet I have been ok and my oncologist is confident I am “as cured as I can be for a disease which has no cure, as yet“.  I still think about it everyday though, as its hard to forget it as I can feel the hole where the piece of missing skull bone should be and the scar, which is about 4 inches long, every time I brush my hair.  But the counsellor was right and it is less painful and I only get anxious and fearful now when I have a series of very bad headaches, but I repeat my mantra and I’m lucky that my GP is excellent and always listens when I have a  panic. 

As for my son he is my remedy on the days where all I can think is what if it comes back,  he has the ability to makes me laugh when I’m at my most depressed. I’ve since spent my time teaching him as much as I can and taking as many photos of us and going on as many days out as we can, so that if god forbid it comes back I won’t have wasted anytime, and he‘ll have some excellent memories of our time together.  It seems soppy but I now live for today and try to just let the future happen instead of worrying about what may happen in 20, 30 or 40 years time. 

Cancer taught me the most fundamental lesson you can learn, it was that life is so, so precious and our time on the world is far too short so spend everyday as happily as you can don’t put off till later the things you really want to do and surround yourself with the people you love the most in the world, you never know when later might be too late.