Around Christmas time 08 I had just got my belly button pierced and one morning I was playing with it and I felt a lump in my stomach. 

I thought it must not have been anything because it didn’t hurt and I wasn’t sick or anything so I just forgot about it. A few weeks later I felt it again and it was bigger but I still hadn’t been sick at all so I ignored it. I then began noticing it every few days and started getting worried, but I still thought “It isn’t anything really serious because really serious” stuff doesn’t happen to me.

"The lump was still getting bigger and I began to be able to not just feel but also see it. "

Then one day mum came into my room before school and told me my sister Anna wasn’t going to school because she was sick. Of course I immediately started making up fake symptoms so I too could get the day off school. I was making up all this random crap then I said that I had a huge lump in my stomach. Mum told me not to joke around about stuff like that and I told her that I was serious and she felt my stomach. She was shocked and made a doctors appointment for the next day.

We went to the doctor and he said that it was probably just a hernia or cyst or something like that, but just to be sure I was going to have an ultrasound.

"I had the ultrasound and the doctor said he would call with the results in a few days."

He called that night saying that we needed to come into the surgery to get the results tomorrow.We were busy till 5pm the next day and the surgery would be closed then, so the doctor said he would keep the surgery open late for us.

We went in the next day and he said that it was a bit more serious then they had initially thought and that it looked like it was coming from my left ovary. I had to get blood tests done, then I had an appointment with the gyno.

"The next day the gyno told me that I had a very rare malignant tumour in my left ovary."          

She had already booked flights down to Brisbane (we live in Cairns) for the next day, and surgery for the day after.We went to Brisbane and had the surgery at hospital and that’s where I stayed for two weeks while I recovered and did physio.

When I got out of the hospital mum and I went to my Aunty’s place to stay till I was allowed to fly, however that night I was in really bad pain – so bad that I couldn’t move, had a really high temperature and was throwing up. The next day, still in a lot of pain, we went back to the hospital to see my surgeon. The doc looked at my scar, asked some questions and said that everything looked to be okay but he wanted me to have a blood test done – just to be sure.

So I had the blood test and started driving back to my Aunty’s place. On the way we got a phone call from the surgeon saying that I had to get straight back to the hospital. We turned around and I was put straight on a drip then taken to have a lot of ultrasounds, CT’s and all that. Turns out that fluid in my belly had gotten infected, so they put in a drain and got it all out but I was still really hot one moment then freezing the next.

"Luckily they found it, and put me on medicine for it."

Not long after that I was well enough to fly back to Cairns where I had to have checkups every three months. Six months after surgery the gyno found another lump with ‘similar properties’ as the last one so I was flown back down to Brisbane for another surgery. It turned out to be nothing but I guess that goes to show why going back for checkups is important.