Aaron's Giving Page

My mums story In 2018 on May 14th our family received devastating news, my mum was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. Previously my mother had some concerns due to some pain so she went to see our local GP but she was told it was early menopause. After 8 moths my mother went to the doctors again as the pain gradually increased as did her distress, this time the doctor was thorough and eventually referred my mum to the breast clinic where via a mammogram, biopsy and a 2 week wait we found my mum had stage 3 breast cancer. My mums lumpectomy/surgery was on the 1st of June, she had never had surgery before and was needle phobic so it’s safe to say she was nervous, thankfully the surgery was successful and with it came mixed emotions of relief that the cancerous cells had been removed and fear what to come, it was around this time we was told what the next steps of treatment would be, my mum was assigned 6 lots of chemotherapy but only went through 4 because of the many side effects both mental and physical, during this time I saw my mum rise and fall to rise again in a continuous cycle she eventually climbed out of into a better place, she additionally went through 19 lots of radio therapy that I sadly was unable to attend due to my school work demands, radio therapy caused greater pain to my mum, she felt as if she was burning and from the inside out and had blisters. Seeing her in agony tore me inside however seeing the strength she displayed in never giving up was a patched me up and I’m privileged to have the feeling. My mum was cleared around the 6th of March and still has regular injections and check ups, this journey was very long and I’m very lucky to say MY MUM BEAT CANCER!, but not everyone is so lucky and it’s important that men and woman are made aware of the threat cancer poses, what they can do to detect signs themselves, where/who they can go to for support, so please help spread awareness so we can all beat cancer. My story During my mums treatment to combat my own impending fear of the unknown I scoured the internet and old biology books to understand what my mum would be going through in the attempt to numb the overbearing feelings of dread and despair. At the time I was 15 turning 16th on the June and it was time to make a choice, I decided to go newvic 6th form college and my decision was mostly based on the location as it was a 2 minute walk from the hospital where my mum would be going to attend her chemotherapy, this meant I could go with her to appointments so she wouldn’t be alone. I’m grateful for my decision as it’s brought many experience and life lessons but it wasn’t Always a smooth ride, most of the time I felt mentally drained and disconnected from the world, I was afraid to show weakness and told my self to man up, I didn’t tell many people about the situation because I didn’t want to be seen as helpless or feel as if I had cheated if given extra support but these concepts created weakness through an internal suffering. It took a long period of time filled with fake smiles and maximum unnoticeable effort to make it to my second year of college where the facade remained fragile as ever until we in class started to look into psychology, something about deconstructing the mind made me more self aware and want to understand why I felt specific emotions which over a few months led to realise that I need to take ownership of my life, accept who I am, what My family has been through, be accountable for who I was, am and wanted to be, i now say to my self that I want to be better than yesterday’s me. To help me be a better version of myself I want to do something for a greater cause to pay homage to my mum and her strength, So I’m now set on running for charity for cancer research UK so that others we can all beat cancer together. Cancer is happening right now, which is why I’m raising money right now for Cancer Research UK. There’s no time to lose!