When I was fourteen and in Year Eight my family and I were holidaying in Queensland.

We visited the theme parks and then headed up to Cairns to visit some family friends. I was normally an excited, active and enthusiastic child and would enjoy going on rides but became uninterested and tired. 

We were constantly stopping for rests and thought it was due to the weather or my Asthma (Back home in Adelaide my inability to breath was being diagnosed as Asthma and my tiredness was supposed to be normal for teenagers); I was having night sweats and losing weight.

The family friends in Cairns commented (it was all less noticeable to my family and friends who saw me every day) and they suggested I go and see their family doctor who was just around the corner. He decided it was best that I went for a few tests and an X-ray, which showed the massive mass, which was inside me.

"It was Cancer. "

And I would have to have Chemotherapy. I had heard this word… People who were dying had it, it made your hair fall out… I cried a lot and was scared and confused. I went for a CAT scan at an Oncologist and was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s.  I had the biggest tumour in the chest the Oncologist had ever seen and he advised we head straight back home to Adelaide and visit the hospital. 

We didn’t cut our holiday short but went snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef instead and travelled home on our arranged date. When we got back I went to the hospital for the first of many more scans and visits.

"Women’s and Children’s Hospital"

Being a teenager is about becoming an adult. You have fun with your peers, learn from your mistakes, face issues like your identity, responsibility, independence, relationships and decide on a career path.  It’s not easy for any teenager but having a huge extra issue like Cancer being dumped on you, I felt like my world was falling apart.I firstly was an outpatient in Ronald McDonald House.

I wanted control over my life, which is hard as I wasn’t in control of my cancer. I didn’t want to be in the situation. I felt guilty. I wanted something or someone to blame.   I wanted to be ‘normal’ and to fit in.  I wanted to be able to do things the same as my teenage friends.  I was invited to join CanTeen but decided I wasn’t interested and didn’t want to be with other sick and dying people sitting around talking about cancer reminding me of what I had; hospital already did that for me.

A few months later I got better and thought Cancer was out of my life forever. For Cancer patients life just doesn’t return to normal or ‘the way it was’. You are now a survivor of the disease and no longer the same person.

"In August 1999, I relapsed."

I was now older and finishing high school, I was crushed.  Being seventeen the opposite sex was now a greater issue in life and I was devastated thinking that no boys would ever want to go out with the girl with Cancer.  How could this happen again to me. My Chemo was increased and changed; I was now an inpatient in the (Haematology and Oncology) Ward.  I also experienced radiotherapy, my hair fell out and I looked different and was asked on many occasions if I was a boy.

The women’s and children’s Hospital has a toy room (a great resource for little kids) and the walls are painted with huge bright murals or clowns, fairies and under the sea themes, all directed at small children and the prints in the rooms were of kittens and Peter Rabbit.  The video collection left much to be desired as after sifting though the Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas I might find half a decent one like Toy Story. 

I wanted to sit on a couch and play music I liked listening to, I found myself spending a lot of time in the ‘quiet room’ a room with two couches and no bright paintings, small children didn’t seem to come in there, it wasn’t exciting. I found the doctors and some nurses directed their conversations to my parents and talked about me, not to me, towards the end I stopped bringing my parents to my appointments.

Eventually something made me join CanTeen, I wasn’t in denial and I felt better about the situation and myself.  I found out its not about sick people sitting around feeling sad but young people like me with something in common (Cancer in their lives) having a great time.  They were people my age, I felt comfortable amongst, I didn’t even have to talk, but we understood each other and could relate to each other.

"Relapse once again"

In June of 2002, at my next regular check up, I was to find I had relapsed once again.  I had to face Cancer again as the Cancer was back.  I felt the lump and knew instinctively, I ignored it hoping it would go away until my appointment where I pointed it out to the doctor. When my doctor got a second doctor to feel my neck, and another CAT scan was planned earlier than scheduled, my mind raced. I felt hate towards this doctor. 

I didn’t get it, how long was this going on for? I didn’t want to be in the room anymore I felt angry.  I felt a busyness and a blackness at the same time, a busting feeling but a void.  My brain rushed with so many thoughts, my life as I saw it was over.  Again I was no longer feeling in control of my life.  Countless types of tests were run to check and recheck.  The process and planning had to start again.

I really believed I couldn’t go through this once again, the nausea, the needles, the missing of a social life.  I would no longer be able to go to Uni, I’d have to quit my part time job. I had to go through this again…. Or did I? I had to decide what to do.  I had to make the decision of whether to have chemotherapy treatment again for the fourth time or to choose not to have it; I felt so much emotion, from confusion, anger, violent, frustration, helplessness, sadness to denial and numb.

It had been planned that I would start intensive treatment in the following week.  I received a letter from my friend, it had a quote that read, “you don’t drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there.” As many people are faced with challenges in life, it’s what you do once faced with them that make people amazing. As I had considered giving up and not going through with the treatment, I cried and thought, yeah I’m not going to let myself drown, I’m going to face and beat this challenge. I knew what I was up against. It was a challenge I had decided to overcome.

"A Hospital in Adelaide"

I now had to go to a hospital in Adelaide, as I was 20 years of age.  It had been 6 years of treatment and checkups at the Women’s and Children’s and now I was being sent to the ‘old people’s hospital’ I had to see a new doctor.  This intense treatment would mean something different again, I was no longer in the safety net of my school where they knew my family, situation and me.  I was at Uni, I had a job, I would lose my hair again and I wouldn’t be able to go to the pub and get drunk with my friends. 

On my first visit I was shown around the out-patients room, it was full of old fogies and I forgot that I was wearing an offspring t-shirt with a few song lyrics on the back with a swear word or two! If the Chemo wasn’t going to kill them, the heart attack they had as they read it would, now I definitely gave them something to talk about.

I was admitted to a Ward that was an experience in itself. I did meet a lot of lovely people and their families, but struggled a lot and was lucky I had friends from CanTeen and other places to visit me to have some people my own age around.  I found that the hospital I was in, in comparison to the Children’s Hospital stuck to rules and guidelines and were less willing to make adjustments, with things like visiting hours, the menu, timetables, showing, choices in taking tablets etc. The waiting around was more boring and sober,

"there was a more seriousness to the whole deal."

I was put in bays with men; where I think they were actually more uncomfortable than I was, but it still wasn’t the greatest listening to old men hock up their lungs and listening to them urinate in a bottle.  On one occasion that was quite distressing I was in a room with Mrs Chitty who not only had Cancer but dementia, she would wake up and yell for somebody as she couldn’t remember where she was, and she would not want whatever food that was served to her, saying “I didn’t want this” forgetting that she had ordered it herself only hours earlier. 

Although we had TV I found myself spending a lot of time in the TV room, as I could hang out with my visitors and didn’t feel like we couldn’t talk about stuff that teenagers talk about in front of adults or I didn’t feel like a sick person that people were visiting at my bedside, it was hard for my friends to stay positive around me as I was surrounded by sick older people lying in their beds.

Having the intense treatment, after two rounds of chemotherapy not working, two more cycles of a different type of Chemo were given.  Then it was time for the bone marrow transplant, where very high doses of chemotherapy are given over a few days and then bone marrow is replaced giving the body a chance of recovering from the treatment, the transplant was to be about a month in hospital.  I was devastated, my hair had started to fall out and any type of social life I had was soon to be over. 

These visits and periods of time in hospital seemed to last a life time and I longed for the day I was out and this was finished, I longed to leave when my visitors did, to be outside amongst the world leading my life, not inside these walls, where the days seemed extremely long and ruled by scheduled blood tests and lunch trolleys.  Following that I was to undergo four weeks of daily radiotherapy.

Needs of Adolescents

The needs of adolescents are different to both children and adults.  They are in this middle group of not being dependent on others (as a child is its parents) or having others depend on them (e.g. children).  They have different issues.  By having adolescent wards you would be surrounded by people where you fit in, feel like you belong, are not alone and have the same interests.

Friendships would naturally form and support would be given.  Adolescents would be surrounded by others that are dealing with similar situations in and out of hospital, they can relate as they are going through the same things.  They would be in a positive environment with others who they can feel comfortable and relaxed amongst.  They can share, listen, have fun, joke, be themselves, give, learn, heal and grow.

Talking is a great healer for cancer patients because it releases disturbing thoughts bottled up inside.  It is proven beyond doubt that the mind can help heal the body when you are thinking positively.  Cancer patients and other young people living with cancer have a genuine understanding of each others situation and what the other is going through.