Week 4 (Day 28) - 28th January 2015 - Big Thanks

Week 4 - 28th January 2015 

 

28 days have passed already, seems to be flying by at the moment. Before I start I would like to say a massive thanks to everyone who has donated so far, in just 4 weeks over £250 has been raised for The Christie. This is 1/4 of the total I had targeted to raise for the full year, so it is going really well. It makes everything worth while when you see so many people getting involved. Would also like to thank everyone that has had the time to read my blog... First time I have done one, just getting used to it but hopefully the things I write about will impact you in some way and raise awareness for all cancers in all age brackets. Please keep reading, I will eventually make sense of what I want to say and the points I want to get across.

 

Welcome Tavern 10k

On to the running... This week I have run 31.3 miles miles which takes the total of 108.6 miles by the end of week 4. On top of this I have also cycled 47.3 miles this week and a total of 190.8 miles so far this year. I have also been hitting the gym as well doing some weight work. It has been hard going at times, especially tonight. Went on a short 5k run, but my legs felt very heavy all the way round, got through it though. I have to say I am really enjoying it. I set a new PB of 20m 43s at Cuerden Valley Parkrun on Saturday 24th January,(http://www.parkrun.org.uk/cuerdenvalley/) took me 5 weeks to finally beat my previous time. So even though I am pushing my body I am getting faster. I also took part in the Welcome Tavern 10k race on Sunday 25th January. Was a great turn out on the day and my final position was 35th out of 293. I ran this is 40m 21s with the first 5k completed in 19m 10s - So my achievement to break the 19 minute mark this year for 5k isn't far off already. I have surprised myself with of the amount of miles I have covered and how I am dealing with it physically. I have found myself having to eat 4, 5, 6 meals a day though to keep up energy. As I also cycle 8 miles to and from work every day, I am burning between 1000-1500 calories daily. So it is vital I keep up the eating, quite enjoying that side of it though. Even though I am eating so much, I am noticing a massive change in my body - I have muscles I didn't know even existed previously, my 2 pack is bulging out, hopefully it'll form into some sort of 4 pack before the end of the year.

In my blog this week I am going to go through the symptoms of Hodgkin Lymphoma and how I eventually noticed there was something wrong with myself. Over 20% of people diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma each year or either young children, teenagers, or young adults up to the age of 24. At these ages, especially in the teens, I feel that you don't think about illnesses and don't really consider looking for symptoms of diseases. You are too busy living your life to pick up on little things that could make a big difference to your life.

 

Symptoms to look out for are:

• Painless swelling in the neck, armpit, or groin.
• Heavy sweating at night.
• High temperatures that come and go out of nowhere, can be anytime of the day.
• Loss of weight in a short period.
• Itching, which can be worse after alcohol
• Cough or breathlessness - (Low red blood cell count within bone marrow)
• Abdominal pains or vomiting after drinking alcohol.

Other symptoms will depend on where in your body the Hodgkin lymphoma is. Enlarged lymph nodes can

• Press on nerves and cause pain
• Cause swelling in arms or legs by blocking normal tissue fluid circulation
• Cause yellowing of the skin and eyes (jaundice) by blocking the flow of bile from the liver

None of these are common symptoms, but they can happen. You may also have small lumps (nodules) develop on your skin, usually near the enlarged lymph nodes.
If you have any of these symptoms you must have them checked by your GP. But remember, they are all more likely to be caused by other conditions. Everyone's glands get larger when they have a throat infection, for example. Most people with these symptoms will not have Hodgkin lymphoma.

Before I was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma, I had no idea about any of these symptoms. Once I had been informed of what they were and went through them in detail, I thought back and things started to add up. I put it down to silly things at the time, never thought twice that I had cancer, was quite wrong with that though.

The symptoms I suffered were itchy legs, night sweats and ended up massive lump on the left side of my neck. Now who would ever question an itch on your leg? A couple of weeks before the lump on my neck was noticed, I bought a new game called 'God of War' for the PlayStation 2. I got a little bit addicted to this game to say the least. Having shared a room with my brother at the time and having bunk beds, I had to lie on my side, tilting my neck to the left to see the T.V properly. As I played it a fair bit at the time, the left hand side of my neck used to ache after a certain period. It was my mum and girlfriend that spotted the lump at the time - I genuinely explained to them it was because of the game and that was that...

My parents told me to stop talking rubbish - Thank God! Within days my mum had arranged an appointment at the local doctors, who then referred me to Chorley hospital. A couple of days later I was in the appointment having the lump drained on my neck. After this, it was discussed that I would have another appointment scheduled to have a biopsy and test the lump for any abnormalities. At this point I had thought nothing about the severity of the situation and what was to come - I still told the specialist it was 'God of War' that has caused this lump... bit embarrassing really thinking back. So I had been back into the hospital and under the knife for the first time for the removal of the lump on my neck, it all went well, no drama.  A week later I was called back to the hospital for my results - D-Day. My mum drove us to the hospital that day, there was a sense of nervousness but I hadn't really thought about it too much. We still joked about and had a laugh up until we went into the doctors office.

He had called us both in and politely told us to sit down, calm manner and softly spoken. He went on to ask questions to see if I had any symptoms over the past week and I denied I had any - Which at the time I didn't know I had experienced a lot of them. We quickly moved past that and he then told us the results - 'Mr Hodgson, from the biopsy some of the cells have come back malignant' (I didn't know what malignant meant at the time... so it wasn't too dramatic at this point, think my mum knew though....) I asked and he explained what it meant and that the cells found were cancerous. It still didn't phase me though for some reason, may have been my age, or the way I looked at things in life.. In the long run though, being this way definitely helped me through everything.


Mother and Father

My mum was so calm though, it didn't seem to phase her - She asked all the questions and found out everything we needed to know at the time. It was then a waiting game to find out the next steps. With her being like she was, it helped me. I was strong, dealt with everything that was said and took it all in. It was as soon as we left and walked into the corridor that it seem to hit home for my mum, she began to cry - Telling me she loved me and she'd always be there for me. I couldn't cry though, wasn't the time, even though I wanted to. I could see how much the news had affected her. I was more concerned about looking after her than what was going to happen to me. In the 5 minutes we had walked back to the car we had talked it out and we was laughing again.. It was then a discussion on the way home of how to tell everyone else. We arrived home and my dad was in the kitchen, he knew as soon as he saw my mum walk through the door. He was so supportive though, saying we would get through anything that was thrown at us. Made me feel a lot more confident about the whole scenario. Not being a parent myself, I will never really know what thoughts went through their heads finding out their son had cancer - They dealt with it like professionals though - that day it was nothing but positive thoughts and with them being the way they were put me in a great frame of mind for the forthcoming months. From that day it was 'Bring it on' - There was no way that I wasn't surviving this, never even entered my head. 'All In the mind' - my dad quoted this and he doesn't know I use it to this day, it has just stayed with me and always will. If you can mentally prepare yourself for scenarios, It gives you a much better chance of getting through tough times. At this point it was then a case of waiting for news from the hospital of where I would be referred to and to actually find out what was wrong with me, all I knew was that I had cancer.

One final thing - about 4-6 weeks before I was diagnosed, there was a couple of scenarios that never really made sense and were really strange behaviour for myself. Playing football for Bamber Bridge under 18's against Burscough, think we drew 2-2. In that game I was involved in a tackle that was a collision of knees. I cried on the football pitch...literally wept, tears streaming down my face. The tackle wasn't even a bad one and I ended up playing on, but there was something there that made me cry. In the same game before this I also had a pop at Tony Nickson, our manager at the time. Nicest man you will ever meet and he has done so much for me over the years from a young age. For some reason though I found myself shouting at him, for no reason whatsoever. So sorry for that Tony :-) My point is that the cancer must have been playing with my emotions with me even knowing.

Rambled on enough for now, but good to share it... If I could write properly maybe it would come across a little clearer, but I'm just telling it how it was. Kind of wish now I'd have done something like this sooner as it's quite hard remembering exact moments and conversations, only 8 years late I suppose.... thanks for reading and I will share more experiences of treatments and honest details of what mental/physical challenges you can go through whilst suffering from cancer.

As always - Feel free to sponsor me if you like :)

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