A mother's love is stronger than anything.

Whilst I was sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, my mom did the best thing she knew how, she started to do everything in her power to help get rid of the ‘problem’.

As I’ve previously mentioned, because there was hardly any research on google with a person that had my type of cancer in the face, my mom decided to find as many research as she could that could cure cancer. She followed lodes of health blogs, websites and her, my brother and my sister even paid lodes of money for me to go to a private dietitian/ doctor that deals with finding the right food and healthy living to get rid of any cancer cells.

I was going to have chemotherapy in a few weeks’ time so we had to work fast in order to make sure my body was nice and healthy so that I could take the chemotherapy without any issues.

(I will tell you what my diet contained during my early stages of chemo on a next page)

Chemotherapy

I'm not going to lie, having chemotherapy was probably one of the hardest challenges (at this point) that I had to deal with in my entire life. But I realised that when you look after yourself, have the support of your friends/family/nurses & doctors around you and have that drive to live and carry on . . . that’s when it starts to become easier. During the 7 months of chemo (add onto the number of times I had infections as well), I had spent more time in the hospital than I did out of the hospital because I had a very intense chemotherapy (because my cancer was classed as being 'aggressive') I couldn't eat, I got dehydrated and collapsed in my home at one stage and I lost a ton of weight.

But as I said before, when you have that drive to live and carry on. That’s when all the hard and tough moments are worth getting through the negative points of chemotherapy.

There is this misconception in the media by some people that having chemotherapy is bad for you and it will just make the cancer worse. I would have to say I strongly disagree with that; for my bone cancer (because it was so aggressive) I believe that if I had not done the chemotherapy and used natural remedies, it wouldn't work. I think combining chemotherapy, natural remedies and living a more healthy lifestyle can all add up to getting through cancer and that is my honest opinion.

I have to also point out that because my cancer was so rare and the tumour was growing at an excessive rate in a small amount of time. I had a feeling that all the health professionals didn't expect me to live as long . . . and that is my honest opinion. But because I took care of myself (with the help of my family and mum) I was able to come out the other side regardless of what was predicted of me and was able to be here today.

The other thing that kept me going whilst I was in the hospital was education. I was always one of those kids who loved learning so because I kept on living my life in the mindset that I was going to complete my chemotherapy and then move on, I started to work on my math skills with my ward teacher, ask for some college coursework from my teacher and lived my life like I was going to have a future.

This I believe was a positive mindset to have (no matter how weak or bad I looked); it showed that I wasn't going to sit in bed all day and make the cancer take over my life completely.

Face Process

As the weeks went on and I endured the downsides of having chemotherapy, my sister and my mum always said to me that my tumour had reduced in size. I didn't believe them at first because I thought it was just wishful thinking on their part because they knew how much I wanted the tumour to go down. But when my sister suggested that whilst I was in the hospital, I should take pictures of my face after each week I had chemo because if I did this, then I would believe them and see for myself that the tumour had in fact reduced in size.

After I took her advice the weirdest thing happened, I started to get excited about each chemo treatment I had! (and you could imagine when I told my friends and family this, they looked at me like I was insane) But I really did start to get excited!; as I compared my face from the previous week to the present, I did see a massive difference in my facial features as did the other doctors, nurses and patients on the ward.

This made me so happy because finally! I could actually SEE that the chemo was actually working and all of the times I felt sick, weak and tired were worth it.