I got my post-chemo PET scan October 16th! The scan came back negative! It’s time to begin a new chapter in life.

Although I am taking the steps to move on, I know that it isn’t going to be easy. It will take a lot of work and time to deal with the worries that will come every now and then. All I can hope for is that this will slowly fade into the background as I move on with my life. Fingers crossed!

Me & my mum…don’t know how I’d get through all of this without her!

My awesome friends, supporting the cause & me!

Our banner for the ‘Light The Night Walk’ tomorrow!

Last Chemo/Thoughts

I can’t believe that my last round of chemotherapy is 4 days away. It’s surreal. It’s been a long 5 months and I’m ready to put all of this behind me and move on with my life. I know that this experience is far from over considering the fact that I’ll still need to check in constantly with my oncologist and have routine blood tests and pet scans every so often. Not to mention the fact that just because I’m in remission doesn’t mean that this disease won’t be on my mind often at first.

The physical toll that the treatment has taken on my body is definitely noticable to me. Even on the weeks that I feel good I still get fatigued more than the average person which at times can be frustrating. At one point one of the drugs in the mix, bleomycin, caused my lung function to decrease by a lot which made me quickly become out of breath by simply taking a walk or going up a flight of stairs. Luckily that’s improved since they took that drug out of the equation. The hair loss was especially traumatic, but I accepted it pretty quickly and I know it will grow back soon so I don’t worry about it too much anymore. A week after my treatments I get this weird painful sensation all over my body. It hurts to even be touched! Again, luckily that only lasts a day or so and I’m used to it by now. In the beginning the Neulasta presented no side effects but lately it has been causing back and chest pain which was annoying. Last but not least, the anxiety throughout all of this has been the most debilitating. Worrying about my health and my future so much was never something I thought would be on my mind at this age. 21 is supposed to be fun and easier than this. It took me a while to stop feeling like I was cheated.

Enough about the negative stuff though…I’ve developed a new positive outlook. Despite how hard this process was for me, the outcome in the long run I know will be a good one. Before everything happened the way I was living was unacceptable. I didn’t have much of a direction and I wasn’t truly happy. I wasn’t very close with my family and I had no drive to do anything productive with my life. I was kind of just aimlessly coasting along. I wasn’t making good things happen for myself.

Things are so much different now. I’m so much closer to my family and it’s great. I now have so much more ambition than I ever did. There’s so much that I want to do. There are places that I want to go and things that I want to see and I know that only I have the power to make that happen. Normal every day activities I will never take for granted again like working or being able to be independent. I’m already thinking about going back to school and working again. Stopping to enjoy the little things is so much more important than I ever thought. Things really can change at any given moment and it’s essential to appreciate what you have when you have it.

I’m realizing that it’s not just a normal ”life” that I’m anxious to get back to; it’s an extraordinary one that I’m anxious to begin.

A month after I began my treatment I remember checking out a website that Mass General had suggested. It was a support site for Leukemia & Lymphoma patients and survivors. On one of the message boards I noticed a blog titled “A Mother’s Tale”. I clicked on it and read a story about a woman named Susan and her son’s battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Even though the story had a very happy ending (her son is now in remission and doing great), it brought tears to my eyes. I was so touched by what Susan and her family went through - I could totally relate, especially since her son is around my age. I messaged Susan and told her that. She replied and said I could email her anytime, so I did.

Soon we began emailing each other every day. It become really helpful to me. It was nice to talk about how I was feeling with someone who had been through all of this. I talked about anything from what I did that day to my latest worries and concerns.

Considering Susan and her family are from Scotland the chances of meeting in person any time soon seemed pretty slim - until recently, when she announced she was planning a vacation to the US, close by to where I live. What a coincidence!

So tonight I got the opportunity to meet Susan, her husband and her daughter. Her son is in a band and was busy touring! My mother and my sister came to dinner with us and we all had a great time! It was so nice to finally meet. I’m so grateful!

With the “Light The Night Walk” quickly approaching I’ve come to the realization that I’m not just out of shape. I’m really, really out of shape. The walk is only a few miles long, but I’m definitely going to need to prepare for it!

So today I set out with my trusty pedometer (love that thing) and took a walk…nothing too crazy, just a walk. My first thought was:I wonder how far I can go. It’s been soo long since I’ve done anything close to working out.For a moment my plan was to just walk and walk and walk until I felt like I was going to collapse, see how far I made it and then call for a ride assuming I’d be too worn out to make it back. That was a ridiculous and luckily fleeting thought. I decided to keep it simple and stick to a couple miles, besides it was hot out.

The walk went well. It would have been better if I wasn’t wearing flip flops and had chosen a route a little more scenic than a busy street in Peabody, but nonetheless it started out just fine. The further I walked the better I felt. It was liberating even! Even though I wasn’t doing anything along the lines of strenuous I still count it as “working out”…pedometer clipped on, water bottle in hand, walking at a somewhat fast pace :)…yeah, working out.

When I reached about a mile I decided to turn around and go back totalling at 2 miles. The amount of calories I burned probably levels out to about half of a bagel that I ate this morning haha but it’s okay.  I even broke a sweat…though that was probably because the sun was beating down on me. All and all it was a success and I’m definitely going to get back into the routine of working out! Next stop gym.

This year my family, friends & I are participating in the “Light The Night Walk” put on by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Our team has almost reached its goal of raising 2,000 dollars. Any type of small donation to help us reach our goal would be MUCH appreciated. Help us put an end to blood cancers! You can easily donate by clicking on the link above. Thank you <3

Words cannot explain how good it feels to regain your energy back after chemo. It’s so depressing laying around in bed for days not able to really get into anything…Not even reading or watching shows and it’s not like you can just sleep the day away either. There are constant alarms going off reminding me to take my pills throughout the day. Every other Tuesday-Saturday is definitely a drag for me! But enough with the complaining, I’m almost done!

I’ve completed 10 rounds (5 cycles) of chemo and I’ve got 2 rounds (1 cycle) to go! I’m starting to feel so overwhelmed! I’m excited to be done with feeling like this and getting back into the normal routine of life, this time with so much more strength than I had before. I’m also nervous for things to go wrong. Even though everything so far has been going really well - it’s impossible for anybody to not worry about the what ifs in this situation. I keep thinking “cure” in my mind and reminding myself that I am getting better and that staying in remission and being deemed cured is usually what happens with HL patients…95% of them!

As anxious as I am to start working again and going to the gym and just doing regular things - I sometimes wonder if there are some parts of this that I will miss - like having all the time in the world to read and relax. Or having it be acceptable to be totally infatuated with a fictional show because your own life is pretty dull at the moment. There will be tons of adjustments that I will need to make once this is all over and I’m sooo ready to make them :)