Petra’s Cancer Journey

Hi there and welcome to my Fundraiser-page where I’m trying to raise money to be able to go on a vacation with my kids before my life ends, because I have stage 4 cancer and it’s sadly it’s incurable. I hope to meet my goal before summer because my time is running out!

My name is Petra and I’m turning 37 years in May 2018. I live with my family in south Sweden. My kids is turning 12 (Melanie) and 15 (Kevin) this year. Since February 2017 I’m battling against cancer again! I have battled against cancer two times earlier in my life (and lost one Ovarie because of it. There was a malign cancer tumor that was growing on it). This time it’s really serious and my chances of winning this battle is not even countable. I’m fighting against stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Here is my Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma story:

March 28th 2017 I went through a Hysterectomy where they had to remove my uterus, cervix (they left a little piece of the cervix) and fallopian tubes because they found aggressive cancer on my Fallopian tubes in the beginning of February 2017. I have had many surgeries done in my stomach. (One time they put me down to sleep and opened me up because they thought that I had appendicitis, but I didn’t. I just had an infection in my right ovarie, so they stitched me together again, I have had Ileus two times, surgery to remove my Gallbladder and Bile Ducts because my Gallbladder was filled with 16 stones and one stone was stuck in my Bile Ducts. I have also done an Gastric by-pass 2010.) I had very much scar tissue in my stomach and that made the Hysterectomy a little complicated to do and afterwards I got a lot of complications, for example MRSA in the wound, sepsis twice during the healing process and when I had my second sepsis they had to re-open my surgical wound (May 11th 2017) to take away all the inflammation and pus that was standing there in my lower stomach and was making me very sick. I spent almost 5 months on the hospital last year just because of the surgeries and complications after the hysterectomy and the removal of all the tumors.

I had to do the Hysterectomy because they had found very aggressive cancertumors in my uterus, they also found a cancerous tumor right next to my bellybutton and I was scheduled for a new surgery when my healing after the hysterectomy was done. But when they opened me to remove the tumor right next to my bellybutton (June 20th 2017) they actually found two cancerous tumors there and they were both removed. They had at that point (June 15th) also found a cancerous tumor in my spleen-area and when they found that tumor it measured 10.6 cm in diameter. I started with chemo July 4th 2017. Because of an autoimmune sickness they can’t remove my spleen and the tumor that sitting in and outside of the spleen because my body need the spleen to keep function. And because of osteoporosis I can’t get radiation.

During the chemo the tumor in my spleen-area became smaller and at one point it was down to 8.8 cm in diameter and the chemo did what it was supposed to do. I was so happy that the treatments worked although I felt like crap, lost my hair and got both depression, anxiety and a fear of dying.

After a while of chemo-treatments I started to have pain in my kidneys, running a fever and felt strange. The testing they did on me showed that my kidneys where failing, and it went quickly. They had to stop the chemo and put me on dialysis (first Dialysis November 14th 2017). Because of the lack of chemo my tumor in my spleen-area started to grow again and in just two months it went from 8.8 cm in diameter to 12.24 cm in diameter and my kidneys were still not good enough to get me back to chemo. Then, on one of my monthly full body scan (November 29th 2017) they found two new tumors on my small intestine. They still couldn’t give me chemo and the tumor in my spleen-area continued to grow and are now in the size of an adult persons heart. I continued with the dialysis. The tumor makes pressure on both my heart and my left lung and I have a hard time taking deep breaths on the left side. I also has gotten high blood pressure (I have always been having low blood pressure so now instead of taking pills to make the blood pressure rise I have to take pills to make it lower!)

Luckily they were able to remove the two tumors on my small intestine (on January 31, 2018) but when I was on a full body scan the day before the surgery they found a new lump, in a size of an walnut in it’s shell, in my neck and my anxiety and fear of dying was back again. Thank you God, the results on the biopsy they did on the lump showed that it was only an inflamed lymph node. And now, thankfully, it’s almost gone.

I got to start again with the chemo February 6th 2018, but after two treatments they had to stop it again because of my kidneys showing signs of kidney-failure once again and I was back on dialysis. Now, since February 20th 2018 I’m back on chemo and they are checking my kidneys every week to make sure they are ok. I got another chemo-mixture this time and it’s called “ABVD” and I also take Prednisone (but that is mainly because I have Addison’s Disease). On the last full body scan February 26th 2018 the results showed that my tumor in my spleen-area had grown another 0.5 cm in diameter. I don’t know the exact size of it in numbers but it’s still in the size of an adult persons heart and it keeps on pushing up on my heart and on my left lung so my blood pressure is very high although I have medication to lower it.

March 1st 2018 I had an appointment on the hospital because when I went to the bathroom there always came blood on my toilet paper. They found one tumor that was 5x4 cm big on my Ovarie (they didn’t remove the Ovarie because then I have had to take Estrogen the rest of my life and Estrogen-medicine can create cancer and I don’t want more of that). They did some biopsies on the tumor, the Ovarie and also on the little piece of cervix I got left. They also did some blood work that should tell if I had Ovarian-cancer. The blood work is done and those result showed no signs of Ovarian-Cancer and the biopsy-result showed no cancerous in my tumor and the other places they took samples from but they are going to check it again in 4 months.

Because of my bad kidneys and the growing tumors in my body I don’t know how long time I got left before my body, soul and heart walks over to heaven. My chemo-treatments is now mainly to not get any new cancer-tumors because it seems like the chemo doesn’t make my tumor in the spleen-area go smaller. That’s why I’ve started this Fundraiser-page. I would really wanna take a trip outside of Sweden with my kids but since I’m home sick and can’t work I don’t have the economy for that. So someone told me about this page and maybe you could help me get my dream come through?

Please share my page with all your friends and I’m so thankful for all the economic help I can get. My dream would be that me and the kids could go away on vacation this summer.

Thank you for your time reading all this and thank you for your help with sharing this Fundraiserpage and thank to you that donated! Maybe me and my kids can do our trip soon.

If you want to read more about Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma click on this link: https://www.healthline.com/health/lymphoma/stage-i...

Lots of love from me to you

XO

Petra