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13 February 2017 my world turned upside down. My GP called to ask me come into the surgery immediately to discuss the result of a routine chest X-ray. How could I have a 14cm tumour in my chest and not have some symptoms from it? It seemed impossible. Bewildered, I went for further scans and a biopsy, and after what seemed like forever but was only a few weeks I was diagnosed with a malignant thymoma type B2/B3. I had never heard of such a cancer, nor had any of my family and friends. Telling my children and my elderly parents what was going on was just the worst thing. I had 6 rounds of chemotherapy to shrink the tumour prior to surgery in August 2017. Unfortunately, the scans hadn’t revealed the full extent of the tumour and having had a sternotomy I was closed up with the tumour still very much in place, despite the best efforts of my very experienced surgeons. And then in the Autumn, whilst recovering from the surgery, a stent was fitted into my SVC to help prop open this major blood vessel. Since then, I have had a partially collapsed right lung and two rounds of radiotherapy. It all sounds grim, doesn’t it? And it is hard to describe how low we, as family, fell in those weeks following the unsuccessful surgery but with brilliant support from the local hospice and from our wonderful family and friends we were scooped up to where we are today.
Life is good. Life is precious. I gave up my full-on career to spend time with family and to focus on myself. As a family we have had some fabulous holidays, celebrated my daughter’s 21st birthday and her graduation, and my other daughter’s 18th birthday and first year at uni. I intend to continue to find things big and small to celebrate every day. I am working with Karen to help establish ThymicUK and to build the group. I am so grateful to have found these brave, fellow travellers and my passion for the group is to improve our treatment through greater knowledge of this cancer and through access to better medicines.
