A young woman from South London was reassured that a protruding lump in her neck was ‘probably nothing’, before being diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ blood cancer last month.
Rebecca Dennis, 22, received the life-changing diagnosis just two months before she was due to finish her apprenticeship.
Whilst at dinner with her mum, the avid West Ham supporter noticed a protruding lump in her neck and she was referred to the hospital for tests.
She was reassured that cancer diagnosis would be extremely unlikely and underwent an ultrasound and two biopsies.
Speaking to MyLondon she said: "Just getting diagnosed was a trauma. Once they'd given me an ultrasound, they were quite concerned.
“They did a couple of biopsies just because the lump was in a bit of a precarious place in terms of the nerves. So if they hit a nerve wrong, my face could have been paralysed too."
Within two months of finding the first lump, Rebecca's condition had deteriorated with more lumps appearing and extreme fatigue weighing her down.
She said: "I started to get really, really tired all of a sudden, like, just insane. And I already have a chronic illness, genetic tissue disorder, which causes a lot of fatigue anyway but this was next level - I could barely keep my eyes open, or anything.
"[I was] sleeping for 16 or 17 hours. I started Googling, I was like, 'Oh, gosh, that's also a symptom of lymphoma.' So then, I was starting to panic more."
On June 15, after a PET scan, Rebecca headed to the hospital with her Mum where she received the news that she had an aggressive, Stage 2 anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL), a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that develops from white blood cells.
She said: “The world just fell through. I couldn't hear anything else. [The nurse] started talking about the science behind the cancer - it's a rare type of large cell lymphoma which only 200 people per year are diagnosed with in the UK. She was telling me the difference between B cell and T cell lymphomas and all of this stuff, but I couldn't hear a word.
"I'm thinking, I want to know what is going to happen to me. Am I going to die? Am I gonna have to have chemo? What's going on?"
Rebecca added: "I just couldn't process a word she was saying. My mum was crying and I hadn't even cried, at that point and I just kind of said to the doctor, 'Please stop talking. Question: Am I going to die?' She said, 'No, it's treatable, it's curable'. And I said, 'Am I going to have to have chemo?' She said, 'Yes'. That was when I started crying.
"It was the biggest shock. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. Everyone, all the doctors are telling you, it's probably nothing, your friends and family want to reassure you. So they're all saying you'll be fine and then all of a sudden it's not nothing."
Rebecca’s life has changed drastically and she now faces six cycles of chemotherapy, one session every three weeks until November, provided there are no complications.
Her outlook remains positive with as the doctors told her she had a 70% chance of remission.
However, when speaking to the doctors she had to question her fertility and whether she wanted children, something she hadn’t considered at such a young age.
She explained: "I got diagnosed, and they were talking to me, saying, 'You have cancer' then like five minutes later: 'Do you want babies?' 'Oh, my God, I don't know.'"
Rebecca opted to have her eggs harvested to keep her options open. But, she said it was a huge and unexpected decision to be faced with at such a young age.
The support that Rebecca has received has been overwhelming, she said, with her friends setting up a GoFund Me page to crowd-fund money so that Rebecca can buy a human hair wig for when she inevitably loses her hair during chemotherapy.
"They are so expensive," she explained. "You're looking at maybe around £1,000.
"Losing your hair is such a big deal: I express myself a lot through my hair, dyeing my hair colours and doing different things with my hair. I think I really link it to my femininity too and to have that taken away from you, it's a really massive blow.
"Especially when it's not your decision to sort of cut your hair short, it's not a choice. Like, with the baby thing? If I had decided that I didn't want babies, that's a whole different thing but having cancer takes these choices away from you. It's really dehumanising."
You can donate to her GoFundMe page here .
