The story of Lucka

Hi I'm Lucy and I'm 28 now, it's been 13 long years since I was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma when I was 15.

It started innocently enough, when in February 2009 I found a lump in my left epicondyle, thanks to my habit of playing with a chain.

I was a 9th grade student in elementary school at the time and was looking forward to my first skiing trip, but unfortunately I didn't get to go. It started with a round of doctors, first with my district doctor, who just looked under my lower eyelid and saw that something was wrong. So she immediately sent me to the children's hospital to the internal ward, where they took blood and sent me to the Children's Oncology. I had no idea what oncology was, I just thought it was weird that they were all bald.

So they had me in right away and said they'd biopsy the lump and see what it was. I'm still at peace, I don't even know what to expect. The surgery was done and I woke up with a tube and I was starting to suspect that something was actually wrong. The freeze test didn't confirm 100% that it was cancer. But we had to wait another 14 days before it was really 100% confirmed.

14 days passed and the verdict was in - Hodgkin's lymphoma stage 3. So the doctors called my parents, and since I was almost 15, I wanted to be there. So we found out I was going to have 4 cycles of chemo, 3 days apart. followed by radiation.

Everyone reassured me that it was a "good" disease that could be cured. And fortunately I was very positive, that I was just sick and that I would be fit in a while. Which I did. The chemotherapy worked and the subsequent radiation and the cancer was gone.

I lost half a year of my life, the last half of 9th grade and the holidays. Oh, what the hell! I then went straight into a new high school, among complete strangers, with about an inch of hair, with a shaved half circle of hair on the back of my neck due to radiation because the hair hadn't grown there yet but I was healthy and could start living again!

At that time I needed to vent a lot, so when we had a speaking exercise in Czech on any topic, it was just the topic My Half Year of Life, first of all so that I wouldn't feel terrible that I didn't have hair, and also so that it would get into the consciousness of young people, because I myself had no idea that all this was happening to young children. And that it was so much that I had nowhere to lie down in the hospital.

In this day and age of social networking and so on, I think it's getting more into the consciousness of young people, but they tend not to admit it.

But in the happiness in adversity, I made a lot of friends that the Mole Foundation and then Pink Bubble connected me with, where I met a lot of people with the same fate, different species, and it was great how we could all talk openly about it together because we were in the same boat.

Time passes, and I am still healthy with only a small consequence, namely the thyroid gland after radiation. I live a full life, I am a caregiver and take care of the elderly, I ride a motorcycle and live every day as if it were my last. That's my motto.

I'm glad that the FUCK CANCER project is being created, just to make this insidious disease known to young people and let them know that they are not alone. That we are all in this together.

Lucka