Story
We are hosting a charity football tournament to remember and honour our friend, Simon.
The charity in which we are donating to is St Luke's Hospice Plymouth. The money raised will be used to make a difference in the south west. St Luke’s Hospice Plymouth is an independent charity providing specialist advice and support to people with progressive life-limiting illnesses in Plymouth, South West Devon and East Cornwall. We believe that everyone deserves quality end of life care, no matter where.
This is Simon's Story
For around 6 months I was suffering with severe pain in my back and leg due to an unknown cause. This took over my whole life and stopped me going to school at times and affected my football and sports. During that 6 month period, my dad took me to the doctors on about 5 occasions and was given painkillers and anti-inflammatory medication to try and treat the symptoms. In hind sight, this covered up the problem but at the same time allowed the tumour to grow inside my body. A few times I was taken for physio by my dad and was treated as if I had a muscular isssue. For this I was shown many different stretches and exercises to perform however nothing seemed to change which is why I got extremely frustrated. After yet another visit to my GP, we were referred for an MRI scan which had a waiting time of up to 13 weeks. After enduring 8 weeks of pain, my Dad chased up the appointment to find that it was still going to be a 6-8 week wait. During a period of excruciating pain, we decided to go to A&E to see if they could do anything to help. It turns out I was scanned that very day to be told I had a large tumour on my pelvis, this was July 5th. This then showed a tumor in the bone which was later diagnosed to be a cancerous Ewing's Sarcoma (a form of primary bone cancer). Other scans also showed that it had spread to another area which was my right shoulder. This all came as a massive shock due to the fact that this never even crossed my mind to affect me at the age of 15. Before any action was taken, the actual size of the tumour I had been carrying was the size of a bag of sugar! The outlook on these types of tumours is not good.