💜 Emily’s journey 💜

In November 2017 my best friend Emily’s life dramatically changed.

At just 26 years of age she was given the worse news possible, Emily was told she had stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma. This is a form of blood cancer which is in the lymphatic system, the disease had also spread to both her lungs and her T2 vertebrae in the spine. This was very dangerous and she was told it could collapse at any moment. Being told this Emily was then rushed up to University College Hospital (UCH) in London where she was bed bound as there was fear of severe spinal damage or a possibility it could cause paralysis.

In this situation there was no time to think just act. It was a very upsetting and a heartbreaking moment for both Emily, her family, and friends to hear. After being seen by the most experienced and world’s best neurosurgeons they performed many tests and scans. They gave Emily and her family some hope in saying that her spine was stabilised and with strong steroids she was able to go home.

This is where Emily’s journey would really start.......

A week later after coming home from the hospital Emily was to start chemotherapy. She started a Drug based treatment called ABVD where she would have to travel to Maidstone hospital on a Thursday every 2 weeks for an infusion which lasted around 4 hours. After 2 cycles Emily had a PET-CT Scan where she was injected with a radioactive tracer to highlight the cancer cells in the body and help the radiographer work out if chemotherapy was actually working. Unfortunately for Emily this was not the case making her journey that much harder, as there was very little improvement so another type of chemotherapy had to be tried out. Before Emily could start on this new treatment she had to have a PICC line fitted to her left arm. This is a type of catheter that is inserted through a peripheral vein, then goes into a larger vein in the body. It is used to intravenously give treatment over an extended period.

The next round of chemotherapy Emily was about to undergo was Escalated BEACOPP, this is MUCH stronger than the previous one and means Emily would have to make frequent trips to the hospital. Each ESC BEACOPP Cycle lasted 3 weeks, it also meant Emily would spend days 1-3 of each cycle having 3 types of infusion and a variety of tablets that last around 8hrs each day. On days 4-7 of the cycle Emily could be hospital free and stay home but would need to take a combination of tablets in order for the chemotherapy to continue working. Day 8 of the cycle meant a trip to the hospital was needed for another infusion which last for 2 hrs this time. Days 9-14 Emily could stay home whilst taking another variety of steroid tablets she would then have a rest period for a week with no treatment which takes her to the 21 days before having to start her cycle all over again, the ESC BEACOPP continued for 6 months.

During these very gruelling 6 months of treatment Emily had to go through an awful lot of horrible side effects, including the dreaded hair loss, nausea and sickness, tiredness and fatigue, and many others. One of the worst being the deterioration of her teeth. This is a side effect that normally only affects 1 in every 100 but unfortunately for Emily she was that one! Her teeth took an awful battering, simple tasks such as eating became neigh on impossible when her teeth were just crumbling away! It also resulted in numerous mouth infections, swelling of the face, agonising pain and many a trip to A&E! Ultimately this has lead to 3 teeth needing to be removed and another 3 teeth to be saved. Unfortunately this isn’t something that is funded by the NHS, even though it was all completely out of Emily’s control.

As Emily hasn’t been able to work for the past 10 months obviously being faced with a bill like this isn’t ideal, when its been hard for her to even make her mortgage repayments each month. So as a result of this I have decided to set up this just giving page to see if we can raise a bit of money to help Emily get her teeth restored.

Please help us bring a smile back to Emily’s face!