My Story Page 1

‘Why me?’ This was the only question that constantly crossed my mind, even now 1½ months after the operation; I still ask myself that same question.

It all started in the month of August. When? I can’t remember, but it was a few weeks after I had been on holiday to Rhodes.

I had slept at my grandma’s house, it is quite an average sized house, quite modern and has pale painted walls inside, My grandma and grandad aren’t the sort of people who are great lovers of vibrant colours. Everything was always in the right place, nothing ever seemed to change around, even down to the way the little ornaments on the fireplace were positioned never changed, everything had its own little home. But the thing I always noticed, was how clean everything always looked, and how a smell lingered in the air, when I walked through the front door. It is the kind of smell that reminds me of my grandad, it makes me want to run up to him open my arms, wrap them around him and bury my nose into his warm chest and sniff all day long. It made me feel at home as soon as I smelt that smell.

I was feeling a bit under the weather when I woke up one morning, as you usually do in the month of August. I had a sore throat and a bit of a chesty cough, so my grandma being the worrier and caring type of grandma that she is, decided to consult my glands just to check that they weren’t inflamed.

As she had suspected, I hadn’t got inflamed glands, yet she was quickly quite concerned with another lump that she had found. I asked her if I had swollen glands and she replied, “They’re a bit swollen!” all the same she had that dubious look on her face, but I thought nothing of it and forgot about the lump.

After dinnertime, I hadn’t eaten much as I was still feeling quite ill, my mum phoned to say she was on her way to pick me up. She was about 15 minutes in total, I was sitting on my grandma’s big armchair, when she came through the front door.

Mum gave me a kiss and said ‘hello’ to everyone, she asked grandma how I had been, and then grandma told her with an anxious, worried look to her face, “Actually Kim, she was feeling a bit unwell this morning, and when I checked her glands to see if they were up, one was a bit swollen, but the thing is Kim it doesn’t seem in the right place for just an ordinary gland to be.”

That was it. As soon as my grandma had said that to my mum I knew that something was abnormal. My face dropped, as if I was on a high speeding roller coaster, just about to go over the highest peak. I was feeling more worried than anything, worried that it could be measles or meningitis, I’d never contemplated what it actually turned out to be at the time, it never even crossed my mind. The rest of the day I was quite on edge, still I tried to think on the positive side of everything, because now a days every lump that you get, is usually down to your hormones, especially through puberty.