A Little Bit About My Life
Hello everyone as I’m sure you’ve all gathered my name is Jack, I’m a 22 year old currently living in Sheffield.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to write about when I joined Medium and I’m still not completely sure but I find writing is a very good form of therapy and letting things out that I normally wouldn’t.
So I had quite a rough 2015 as I’m sure many people did, my father got diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia in July and my life has been an absolute whirlwind ever since. Anybody who has had to deal with Cancer in the family or the possibility of losing a parent at such a young age I’m sure you can relate and the ups and downs are like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
When he first got diagnosed I felt like I was in a dream world, like nothing I said or did was real and holding on to the possibility that I might one day wake up and everything would revert back to the way it was before. Sadly this wasn’t the case.
His initial stay in hospital lasted a month we hardly knew anything about what was going on the only thing I was certain of was that he had cancer, the amount tests that he was having was insane he would be wheeled in and out of test rooms all day and we had to wait around three weeks for any results to return to find out exactly what was going on. 99% of the time my dad kept a brave face and a positive attitude which is one of the many reasons I admire him so much, when the results had come back it was just a confirmation that he did have AML and that it was very severe and the only cure was a bone marrow transplant. During the initial two or three weeks of chemotherapy my dad was in quite a lot of pain with his chest it would occasionally just lock up and he struggled to breath, the doctors were saying this was just down to the leukaemia. Around a month later they then told us they had found yet more cancer cells in a lymph node but this couldn’t be rated to the leukaemia so this had to be a secondary cancer and they thought it had spread from his lungs. Obviously the family was just completely in bits, there’s nothing we could do to help and we just had to wait for yet more results.
When the results finally came back the secondary cancer definitely wasn’t in his lungs but somewhere else that they can’t identify but they can control it and hopefully get rid of it with even more chemotherapy but a different kind to the one that was being used for the AML. Their was hope that he was going to get a bone marrow transplant before this but they said there’s just no way they can do it with the secondary cancer still there. During all of this my dad still remained so positive and brave and that’s something that I don’t know that I could do myself, he had his ups and downs obviously as anyone would but he never let it show.
Skip forward another few months and many hospital trips and test results later and my dad has managed to beat the secondary cancer, their are no signs showing in his body anywhere. They are now saying that they are going to go ahead with the bone marrow transplant and I am so happy and proud of him that he’s managed to get this far. We’ve still got a lot further to go and I’m sure we’ll get there eventually but it’s all about remaining positive.
Learnt so many things this past year and the best of all is that despite what horrible things life can throw at you, you can always hold on to hope. Try and remain as positive as possible for your sake and the people around you, and as long as you have good family and friends to guide you through, you can get through anything.
During all of this I’ve recently found a job that I love and I really enjoy waking up in the morning knowing that I am going to embrace life and anything that it can throw at me.
I don’t know if anyone will read this but if you have thank you so much for taking the time to learn a bit about my life.
I hope if anyone is going through similar situations that this in some way helps.
