Em’s Story

As many of you may know our founder Emily sadly passed away after celebrating a year cancer free – after beating it twice.

Emily inspired and touched many lives and while Remission Possible will carry on her legacy of inspiring, campaigning and educating this section of the site will tell her story in her words.

“I don’t want you leaving this saying how  inspirational I am unless you are inspired and motivated to do something”.  Emily Remission Possible.

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Hi guys! I’m Emily, and this website and this project was a brain child of mine sometime in early 2014

Now why, was I thinking about setting up websites, and project names when quite frankly as a 16year old girl I should have had better things to do? After all, usually I am busy enough, what with A levels, musical instruments, several siblings and volunteering.

Well, to put  it frankly  I had cancer. Yeah that sucks.

Sometime in November 2013, I noticed my stomach swelling up, as if bloated. At first I thought I was actually bloated or had put on some weight (even though I wasn’t eating enough to out on weight) Over the next coming weeks my stomach no longer just felt bloated, there were two hard lumpy areas in them. Aside from the occasional cramping, this was my only symptom.

So being the sensible little thing I am I took myself along to my local GP surgery, (early December) where to err on the side of caution they gave me a box of Movicol- hoping a hefty does of laxative would do the trick and my tumours  were actually  load of poo! Unfortunately not. What with the waiting lists for NHS ultrasound scans being pretty crazy long, my lovely mum look me for a private scan which pretty much set the ball rolling.

From there I spent two weeks in and out the delightful Royal Gwent Hospital with scans etc, until on the 20th December 2013 the amazing Dr Claire Rowntree told me I had Non Hodgkin (Burkitts) Lymphoma.

An from there on I had treatment for nearly the next four months, which included a chest drain on Christmas day, four courses of chemotherapy, eight does of monoclonal antibody therapy (ooooo), nine lumbar punctures, a feeding tube and a whole load of side effects. I stayed in hospital for a large proportion of my treatment, around 10 out of the past 15 weeks, and trust me staying ANYWHERE apart from you’re own home for that long will drive you nuts!

I was discharged from hospital after my last chemo on the 30th march, rested then had my PET scan on the 16th April, with me finding out I was in remission and OFFICIALLY CANCER FREE on the 17th April 2014

In the 6 months that followed that, I went back to school, continued with my studies and have been blogging up a storm here at RemissionPossible.

Unfortunately that isn’t the full story so far. I wish I could say that I in school struggling away at A Levels, but I can’t. I was told I had relapsed in the 13th November 2014, a year ago now.

Since then I’ve had more chemotherapy and found out on New Year’s Eve 2014 that I had beaten cancer again!

This wasn’t the end of my treatment though. To try and ensure we kept the cancer away, I had a bone marrow transplant frm an anonymous (awesome) Spanish donor on the 28th January 2015. In the process of finding a match, we estimate we signed up more than 5,000 people to the stem cell register!

So how am I now?

Well I continue to be cancer free, and am trying to regain my life. The road form transplant has been harder, physically and emotionally than I ever imagined it could be.  I’ve had issues that have meant I’ve spent the majority of the time since my transplant as an inpatient and in isolation, and am currently dealing with a bout of GvHD that has made all of my hair fall out again. I spend all of my time on a cancer ward, bald, yet don’t have cancer. Strange.

I am getting on with things though and am in university studying a foundation degree 🙂

I am constantly looking for new projects, people to talk to (or at) and just ‘stuff’ to get involved in.

Together we will #makeRemissionPossible