I was happy, living life to the fullest, had been doing plenty of travelling and was half-way through my law degree when my world suddenly was shaken upside down by something I knew nothing about.

"I felt like I should cry"

Not because I was sad, because to be honest I had no idea what was going on. Only that in the movies when the C word is involved it usually connotes something bad… usually death. I felt like the doctor would think I was weird if I just sat there. Especially with that look she was giving me. And the way she handed me the box of tissues.

I didn’t know what she was talking about or what was happening in those five minutes that she’d told me I had a tumour in my chest that was 9 x 12 cm and I had to go immediately to the emergency department where they were waiting for me as everyone was suspecting it was cancer. My crying came more out of confusion and suddenness I think.

"I had so much going through my head that nothing made sense"

This all kind of happened over a period of two days, with the beginning of it being when I visited my GP to check up on a cough and shortness of breath I’d been experiencing. My doctor sent me for a CT scan after the initial x-ray showed a greying spot in my lungs.

The CT scan showed up even worse and the report wasn’t promising either. I know because I snuck a look at it before I returned it to my GP and obviously, with my curiosity getting the better of me, I then proceeded to look up the strange sequence of alarming terms used in the report.

‘Mediastinal’, I discovered on Wikipedia, is the area of our body where our lungs and heart are located. Obviously typing this into Google alongside tumour didn’t show up the best results. Lung cancer was the first to hit the screen and obviously the most alarming for a young non-smoker to be hit with. I was dumb-struck.

"I knew I should have left the scan envelope closed"

and waited for a medical professional to explain it all to me in layman’s terms. As I was nervously awaiting my return appointment for the doctors, the news I’d discovered on the internet sent me into a state of shock I think. This was September 2007, and it was just the beginning of the journey really.

Over these two days, I’d told no one but my best friend what was going on. I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously and I would sound like a hypochondriac. Who wouldn't?

"It’s not exactly something everyone worries about with a healthy 20 year old"

Less than an hour later I was sitting in the doctor’s office crying because I didn’t know what else to do. Kind of like how Erin my best friend hugged me because she felt she had to, and because she also didn’t know what else to do.

And five minutes later I was across the road outside the emergency department at the hospital crying on the phone to Dad about the news I’d just found out and not comforted at all by the fact that the man I rely on to calm me down was speechless and void of any advice at all.

And when he did speak I heard a croak in his voice. I cried even harder. Right there, surrounded by people I didn’t know; people who were there for their sprained ankles and minor headaches. People who looked at me in shock and sympathy when I explained in sobs over the phone to my dad that they’d found a tumour in my chest and suspected cancer and that they needed to meet me at the hospital immediately. I spent the next few weeks as a hospital resident,

"still dazed and confused about what was actually happening"

It took about this long for all the tests to confirm what type of cancer diagnosis they were looking at and what stage I was currently at. In the meantime I had a plethora of other health issues to deal with as a result of this ‘thing’ - an effusion that had developed around my heart (in other words a collection of fluid resulting from the tumour residing in that area).

A cord was inserted into my chest and guided into the sac surrounding my heart where it would drain the fluid out. I was awake while they did this. It was the most painful experience of my life up until this point, but was certainly not going to be the last. As the cord touched my heart, the seven doctors and nurses aiding in the procedure stepped away from me. They watched and waited. I thought they were waiting for me to die. I was screaming out in pain for them to get the cord out. It stayed in there for over an entire agonising week of pain. I was alone and on the brink of death for what was to be the first of many times. After the operation I came face to face with the terror people were being put through because of me.

"My grandma and Erin were the first to see me"

Their eyes welled up as they stared down at a person they didn’t recognise. I was groggy and in pain. Covered in my own blood and that yucky brown stuff they use to clean an area of your skin where a foreign object is to be placed through. I will never forget the pain it caused my love ones to have seen me in that state. They placed me in the Cardiac Care Unit to be monitored closely and kept on a high dose of pain killers. I was locked away in isolation and visitors to the ward were buzzed in on an individual basis. I could’ve been anywhere in the world for all I knew. I didn’t move for a week. I lay limp and heavy as I learnt what it felt like to be incompetent and cared for by nurses and hospital personnel.

On October 1, 2007

"I was officially diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma"

The first week of October I started Chemo and about a week later I started pulling out clumps of my hair. And then it really sunk in. Week after week always the same. Wednesday I was administered the various drugs. 8 hours of sitting in a chair. Not moving. Other chemo patients in the chairs surrounding me. I now know what it feels like to have poison running through your veins. I know what it feels like to have it seep into the lining of your stomach. Like you’ve drank every household chemical in your house for weeks and you’re stomach consists of nothing but poison. It seeps into every organ and you can feel where in your body it’s going.

"That’s the downside of chemo I guess..."

It kills everything, not just the cancer. And boy do you feel it. To start with I would usually notice the effects of what went through my body on a Wednesday for a few days on and would have recovered by the Monday only to go through it again on the Wednesday. By the end I was no longer recovering in time for another dose. I knew what to expect and that I think is the scariest of anything. Waiting to lose control of your body once again.

I used to threaten to run away every Tuesday night. I knew what was in store for me the next day and nothing frightened me more. I begged not to go through it again even though I knew not having it would likely result in my death. At the time nothing could have been worse than sitting in those chairs feeling every inch of my body overtaken by drugs and losing absolute control. I hated that I couldn’t go to the shops, go to uni or even wake up feeling normal. And no matter how many people I had surrounding me that I knew loved me

"I still felt alone in this thing"

At first I dealt with the effects extremely well. The hair, yeah I could deal with that. The weight gain from the steroids, well that was a little harder. But the infections I got week after week that landed me in hospital were just too much to deal with! First it was a staph infection, then an infection growing in my pic line, a near kidney failure, then another infection and another. So many that I forgot what each was. They were all the same to me, representing another part of my life that was stolen from me by the presence of a hospital bed and beeping monitors, and that I will never get back. The chemo made me so sick that it was hard to see that it was saving my life.

At this point my 21st was quickly approaching and by this stage me getting out of hospital was a slim chance. Christmas was even worse for me. Severe mucositis and another infection had landed me in hospital this time and rendered me unable to eat or drink for approximately three weeks. Not only that but I also couldn’t walk. I couldn’t talk. I could barely breathe, but the chemo had meant I couldn’t have an oxygen pump. There was blood coming out of my nose, and even my eyes were bleeding at times. On top of this, pain overtook my body and

"I was relying on morphine to get me through the days"

I had also started turning a shade of green and in some patches of my body my skin actually started to rot and fall off leaving a patch of rareness and blood. It was sick. I was nearing the end of my chemo and I thought to myself that each week had just accumulated to a point where my body could no longer fight the effects.

People came in to visit me and had to leave immediately because their stomachs were churning so badly from the mere sight of my bed ridden body. My brothers and sisters were amazing though, nothing fazed them and they were still making jokes about how annoying I was. My 8 year old sister even spent nights beside my bed in the uncomfortable recliner. She was even there when I was too out of it to notice. Other family flew up from other parts of the country to be there in my worst time. ‘Just in case’ I always thought. I could see the fear in their eyes

"and that's what scared me the most"

A few shady and drug induced weeks later I was slowly coming to and recovering from the last of those doses of chemo that had almost killed everything within me, including my spirit and my will to live. Things happened slowly after this but it was the little steps that one by one gave me hope. The chemo was over, I was released from hospital, I started walking, talking, eating and drinking again with little to no pain. And even though I still had daily radiation to look forward to,

"I was out of hospital and that’s all that mattered at the time!"

I still had my weekly check ups, and a few side effects from the radiation. Most of the effects, I was warned, were going to be long term. Just some more things I get to look forward to! But apart from this, I knew that nothing I could go through now would ever compare to the hell I was living through with the chemo.

Soon after treatment finished, however, life started looking up. I began getting my health back, and lost most of the weight gained throughout the horrible steroid period. Uni was back in full swing and I was loving it. On July 24, 2008 I was told my cancer was in remission.

"It was the happiest day of my life!"

I had thought on and off about dying throughout my treatment, and avoided thinking about it a lot also, and now I could face it and know for the moment it wasn’t going to happen that way! I was finally able to get back on track with living the life of a normal 21 year old. My life, however, will never truly be the same as each day will consist of that dreaded fear and worry of a re-occurrence. But at least I have the option to take one day at a time and enjoy that day in all its glory.

Like I said, life after cancer is never the same as it is in your naïve pre-cancer state of mind. You worry about every little thing, and it will always be that stage in your life that you won’t forget. I was reminded of this when I had a regular check up earlier this year, almost a year to my remission date, and was told that another mass had been found and it was a possible relapse that included more chemo, a possible stem cell transplant and very bad chances.

"The things that had settled in my life were all up in the air again"

I went through the numerous tests and scans to make sure before anything was done and everything came up with the appearance of cancer. I went into surgery and had a mediastinoscopy where they biopsied the tumour which was behind my sternum.

When I came out of surgery, all bleary eyes and dazed, I was informed that the scans had given a false positive and the tumor was in fact just a cyst. Another huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.

"Yes, it was a scare that shook my whole world upside down again"

but in the end it just reminded me that I no longer have the luxury of taking things for granted and being blasé when it comes to my health. And that brings me to where I am today, in my final semester of a double degree in Law and Arts (majoring in Politics and International Relations).

Cancer gave me the strength of character to get to where I am today; I have no doubt of that.