Hi folks, my name is Cathy.
My cancer story began way back in 2004. I had moved to Tavistock in 1993 following the loss of my son, who was just coming up to his 16th birthday. I needed an income and realising that the massage therapy sl-qualification I’d acquired wasn’t enough. I started a small business making therapy couch covers and accessories. I’d been struggling with extreme fatigue, drenching sweats, had lost weight and felt as though I was surviving on neat adrenalin – I had an all encompassing internal earthquake going on constantly. I was 55 and menopausal, wasn’t this what one might expect?
I eventually went to the Doctor, because I had felt a mass in my belly which I’d made the mistake of breezily describing as ‘I think I’m expecting a baby kangaroo’ – it felt like the back legs! The doctor obviously took it equally lightly and told me that it was because I was so thin, and I was feeling the contents of my abdomen/bowels! Not anything to be concerned about but he’d book me in for a scan to stop me worrying!
Three months later, after an ultrasound scan I was told by the same doctor that I, sadly, had cancer of the pancreas!!
My darling brother flew over on xmas day from the US to say farewell, and in the January I was given a CT scan and had a biopsy.
It was almost a relief to be told that it wasn’t the pancreas, but that I had CLL and Stage IV Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, slow growing and not curable but treatable. I was also told that if I had presented any sooner with my symptoms, I would have been on ‘watch and wait’. I guess I’d just felt that most of the way I’d been feeling was still grief, my age and fatigue and stress from running a business from home.
I started my first lot of treatment in the March – a combination of Mitozantrone intravenously and Chlorambucil, and steroids orally for support. This treatment to be given once a month for 6 months.
A scan at ‘half time’ showed the mass had shrunk and I asked to stop. I think I had got so low and ill before I got help, I just couldn’t take any more and still keep my business going. I’d lost even more weight and felt ‘dead’.
I was supported in my decision, as I always have been, at Derriford, and within a short while, I was feeling the benefit of those 3 treatments. I had more energy and a new determination to live.
I concentrated on eating healthily, had various complementary therapy sessions, used castor oil wraps and generally tried to support the medical help I’d had. It made me feel a lot better to be doing something for myself.
That’s one aspect of a slow growing cancer – it gives you time to decide what’s important and to be able to do what you can to make your peace with family, friends and life!
It took a couple of years to fold the business, end a relationship that was no longer healthy and find a new home for myself.
In May 2008 I was able to have a precious week in Italy attending my daughter’s wedding and had the added immense joy of discovering I was to be a grandmother by December!
In the October, following a regular routine appointment, I unfortunately discovered the cancer had returned and I needed more chemotherapy. After a brief spontaneously booked week in the sun, I returned ready to face the next onslaught! This time the drugs I was given were Vincristine, Rituximab and Cyclophosphamide. Not exactly a ball, but I tolerated all 6x monthly treatments and in the middle of them I was able to get to Essex and be there for the birth of my grandson. I drove back in the January snow feeling absolutely on top of the world.
In 2013 I called an ambulance for myself as I had inexplicable pain in my very distended abdomen. I was admitted to the old Oncology Ward at Derriford, and spent a week there gazing at the hospital chimney. After a scan guided biopsy and various blood tests, Dr. Copplestone came to see me to offer me a place on Dr. Rule’s trial which was covering mantle cell Lymphomas and CLL (among other Lymphoproliferative conditions). I presumed the CLL had returned and that the NHL was no longer significant. I just felt grateful to still be supported and offered a chance to be a tiny part of the development of less invasive treatments. Obviously a trial involves a lot more monitoring – bone marrow biopsies, loads more blood tests, but also wonderful support from a very caring team of research nurses and consultants. The trial drug was Ibrutrinib. So I had a 50/50 chance of getting either the placebo or the ‘real’ thing, and the necessary back-up drugs were Bendamustine and Rituximab intravenously once a month for 6 months; The 3 trial pills to be taken daily at home.
At the end of the 5th trial session my Neutrophils (A type of white blood cell) suddenly dropped to zero and I was taken off the trial a month early – but, I had been on the drug and not the placebo at least!

I had been having a lot of chest infections, pneumonia, pleurisy, shingles and found that I certainly couldn’t fly, even up to Scotland to visit family; any kind of public transport often resulted in catching something! Over the past four years I’ve been very fortunate to have 3 weekly infusions of immunoglobulin to support my wrecked immune system and I’ve now had 2 consecutive winters without infections or hospital admissions! A real blessing.
I suppose It’s all “watch and wait” with a cancer that is ‘incurable’, but I have had 15 years of life since my first treatment, during which time I’ve managed to spend a lot of productive joyous times with my far-flung family. One thing that was very important to me. was to outlive my parents; they’d already had the tragedy of losing their grandson, and to be around for my beautiful daughter who’d already lost her brother and father. My mum died in 2010, and my dad a year ago at 95 – still going to the gym, swimming and walking regularly. My daughter’s family live in rural Essex, my sister on the north coast of Scotland and my brother almost next door (relatively), near Swindon! I’m getting more involved locally and acquiring new skills and accepting new challenges.
In the last 15 years I’ve developed arthritis, gout in my finger, had to have an emergency pacemaker fitted in 2016, have got a blockage in the artery that feeds my leg (intermittent Claudication) and Osteoporosis. I know side effects of the various chemo drugs have resulted in damage, but a lot of my 70 year old ‘sufferings’ are hereditary and I just feel incredibly lucky and very grateful, to still be around.
I celebrated my 70th birthday last year treated by my lovely daughter to a big family get together. None of us know …. there have been short periods of time that I have felt I’d had enough – utterly energy-less and useless but so far …..
and these days I am feeling pretty good!
I can only deal with the experience as it is ‘now’. Ready for the return of the sun ….. with humility and gratitude. I do hope that my story is helpful in some way, and that I haven’t ‘gone on’ too much with irrelevancies.