There's a Panda in my Bellybutton

  4 Years in Remission In May 2017 Ryan finished his 6 gruelling cycles of Chemotherapy and was in remission for 3 months before his cancer returned in September 2017. I wrote about our first 3 month cancer free milestone in our blog post here . In August 2020 Ryan once again finished treatment. This time he completed 3 years of Immunotherapy treatment and in November 2020 Ryan had tests done to confirm he is once again in remission. This is, of course, outstanding news but we were muted in any celebrations as it was such early days and we had been here once before. Ryan has been having regular check-ups every 3 months and in May 2021 we were able to confirm he has reached the 9-month milestone which was phenomenal news. Massive Scare - Relapse #3, ALMOST. Tuesday 4 October 2022. Ryan mentioned to me about an Ulcer on the roof of his mouth. I took photos and monitored for a couple of weeks before we start to panic too much.😳 Thursday 27 October 2022. Sadly Ryan has had to have y...

Cancer Doesn’t End When Chemo Does Ryan finished his chemotherapy treatment on his brother's 18th birthday in May 2017. The last two years and eight months were a blur of stress. Yet coming to the end of treatment coincided perfectly with Cancer Survivors Day on the first Sunday in June, each year, so what better way to mark this day than with our own survivor story. Ryan's weight at diagnosis was a staggeringly poor 42kg. He had lost so much weight not being physically able to eat due to the tumour in his throat, but with thanks to his own determination and the feeding tube that he had. Ryan's weight as we start his final chemo cycle....drum roll....prepare yourselves.... was an amazing 57kg. A year on in 2018 and despite going through treatment for the second time after relapse. Ryan weighs an impressive 65kg. Chemotherapy Cycle six Started on Monday, 1 May 2017 for hydration and the week went well without any drama. His final chemo took place on Friday, 5 May wh...

Lymphoma Treatment - Side Effects As a result of the steroid chemotherapy that Ryan has been on for his Lymphoma treatment, he has developed Adrenal Insufficiency. This is hopefully a temporary condition that will improve once chemotherapy treatment has finished, however, only time will tell. There are two types of Adrenal Insufficiency. Primary and Secondary. Ryan’s type is secondary and can be traced to a lack of ACTH, a hormone which causes a drop in the adrenal glands production of cortisol but not aldosterone. This form of secondary adrenal insufficiency has occurred after receiving a glucocorticoid hormone, in Ryan's case, Dexamethasone steroid as part of his cancer treatment. Cortisol is normally produced by the adrenal glands, which are located just above the kidneys. Cortisol has many functions, but its most important job is to help the body respond to stress. The high dosage use of Dexamethasone to treat Ryan's lymphoma has caused a hormonal imbalance which hopefully...

What is Normal? With this being our penultimate cycle of chemotherapy I have had several family and friends comment to me “oh I bet you can't wait to get back to normal”. This has really thrown and upset me because it seems to come across that they have failed to comprehend the fact that we have 2-3 years of maintenance ahead and at least two more general anaesthetic surgeries. Not to mention physiotherapy as it is expected Ryan will take 12+ months to heal from the effects of being poisoned from the inside out. Normal is long way off yet. While everyone else appears to all be getting excited that Ryan is coming to an end of his chemotherapy protocol treatment, Ryan himself is becoming more and more tired with the cumulative effect of the onslaught of the chemotherapy drugs and is spending long periods of time in hospital after each cycle with infections due to his impaired immune system now as a result. Ryan is far from excited. Ryan is exhausted. We still have one more cycle t...

Whole Body Reaction to Infection Ryan completed chemotherapy cycle 4 in March 2017. We were discharged from the Teenage Cancer Trust ward at Cardiff hospital and managed a week at home before Ryan was unfortunately admitted to Carmarthen hospital with febrile neutropenia. Febrile neutropenia is a whole-body reaction to infection when there is a low immunity due to chemotherapy. Ryan's temperature reached 40.1C and his lymphocyte white blood cell count was 0.2. When the count falls below 1, this is called neutropenia and infections become a high risk. Neutropenia is very common in cancer patients and we have done well to avoid an episode up to this stage. The standard oncology protocol is to spend a minimum of 48 hours on IV antibiotics and 7-10 days on growth hormone injections to support the recovery of the white blood cell count. It didn’t go quite as smoothly as this however for Ryan, but that is whole other story that will be told later. Chemotherapy is likely to cause a lo...