My Story continued... Page 5.
That was when my uncle stepped in, he is a wealthy, laid back kind of guy, who knows what he’s talking about, and achieves what he sets out to do. As soon as he found out about my illness, he was in his car and firing off to our house like a bullet being shot from a gun.
When he arrived next morning, we told him that the next step was to have the M.R.I scan, but it couldn’t be done until after Christmas, well all I can say is that wasn’t good enough for my uncle. He was on the phone within a matter of minutes, making me an appointment, to see the specialist at the Priory Hospital in Birmingham. He paid a vast sum of money for me to be seen a.s.a.p. With that, I was off to Birmingham the very next morning. This made me feel very special in a way, like I really must be cared about by so many people. It also made me realise, the reality of it all. This is when the seriousness of the cancer, was beginning to bury its way into the mind.
The next day was 1st December; my uncle had stayed over night at our house, as he wanted to come with us to the Priory. The journey was roughly an hour long, and when we got there, I felt as I was in a desolate town, where no one existed but my family and me. The place was so cold looking and I didn’t feel at all welcome. Deep down, I was thinking I really don’t want to be here, I felt as if I wouldn’t be cared about as much, as I would be in the Children’s Hospital. I felt as though I would be a burden, putting pressure on the staff there.
We were escorted to part of a building, where I was told to fill in a form, and change into my night-dress, that I had bought with me. I also had to remove any jewellery that I was wearing, including my belly button bar. I waited in suspense and as I didn’t know what quite to expect from this machine, I started to shiver in my chair with nervousness. The nurse then called us in to another room, which contained a huge machine in the centre, the machine looked like a giant mouth that would swallow me up if I went near it.
As I was lying in the machine, I had never felt so claustrophobic in my life, I was inside a long tube for 30 minutes, and as each minute went by I grew more uncomfortable. It felt as if I was in a mortuary in one of those metal cabinets, the ones with the dead bodies in. I wasn’t allowed to move, and I had this constant sound in my ears, it was like a heart beating faster and faster as time went by.
That day went by, everything was confirmed that it was cancer, which I didn’t really mind much anyway because, I didn’t have any doubts and sort of guessed that it would be, when the doctor’s suggested the idea. I met with the specialist Mr. Watkinson, which turned out to be the surgeon that would be operating on me.
Then came the next heart rendering part, to the long road I was travelling along. Mr. Watkinson told me, that this case of Thyroid cancer was extremely rare in children, so rare in fact that only 3 children, out of the whole of the country are diagnosed with it every year! And boy did I feel lucky! NOT! But then came the biggest hurdle which I had to conquer, Mr. Watkinson notified me that if I didn’t have this operation (not that I had a choice anyway!) as the cancer is slow growing, I would only have 20 years maximum to live. Instantly that made my mind up for me as you can imagine, I wanted this operation done as soon as they were able to operate.
