Jodie’s journey
Faith journey My grandmother (now in heaven) led me to Christ in her Sydney kitchen when I was 13 years old. At 33, I faced the largest challenge of my life, but I didn’t realise it. I had felt run down and tired for some time, but having a baby and a disabled daughter always seemed to account for this. In November 2005, I found a large lump in my breast. Concerned it was breast cancer, I arranged an immediate check at specialist breast clinic. I was told it was just a reactive lymph node, due to infections. I had been catching more illness than ever before and it was assumed that this was the reason for the enlarged nodes. In retrospect, we now know that my immune system was breaking down and I was not able to fight off infection. The enlargement of my nodes was part of the greater problem. The cycle continued in pursuit of a diagnosis: 11 months of searching; seven doctors and 21 doctors’ visits. I could get no assistance and no-one would listen to me. One morning at a ladies’ church camp, I woke to find numbness and sciatica in my right leg. Finally, after a week of no sleep, terrible pain and little relief, I said to my husband, “If I still feel pain in the morning, I’m going to hospital emergency for help”. I went, and a senior doctor decided to do a CAT ‘just in case’. What was revealed would shock and distress the doctors, nurses, myself and my family. That night, a doctor came to tell us (my husband Greg and I) what they had found. I will never forget her words: “I have been chosen to tell you what we have found” (in other words, she got the ‘short straw’). “You have a mass in your back that is causing your pain and sciatica; it’s eating into your spine and pushing
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into your sciatic nerve, hence your sciatica. We don’t know what it is, or where it’s come from, but we think it’s probably malignant.” I remember pleading with this woman to tell all of the other doctors to work hard to save my life, because I was only 35 and had two small children to live for. My final diagnosis was Follicular Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, B-Cell, lowgrade, stage 4…the very last stage. I found out later that I had Lymphoma eating into bones, nerves and muscles in a large amount of my body. The pain in my shoulder was bone pain from Lymphoma. The process began: seven weeks of hospital as an in-patient to start with (all up 10 weeks inside); biopsies, tests, MRI’s, scans, x-rays and then radiation and chemotherapy. Two weeks of emergency radiotherapy to save the function of my right leg; six rounds of chemotherapy and eight rounds of a special Lymphoma