Jenna's Giving Page

Here is why im raising money for cancer research. I will never forget the phone call I received the morning of November 27th 2018 , my mother had been suffering with what we thought was sciatica since the 23rd of September that year. She had finally been given a date to have a scan to see why she was still in so much pain, but the scan showed up something that shocked us all. There was a tumor on the bottom of her spine! She was sent home the next day after having a biopsy to confirm the first set of results took over a week to come back they were inconclusive, which meant she would need to have yet another biopsy with yet another wait for the results. Two weeks later results were back we had an appointment in the heath hospital Cardiff . That is where it was confirmed that she had a sarcoma of the spine and it was resting on her sciatic nerve. The pain must have been unbearable for her all that suffering.. So where do we go from here we all thought? We had an appointment in Velindre Hospital Cardiff, where myself my dad and my Brother Daren all attended, at this point my Father has lost over a stone in weight and my mother was in a wheelchair unable to put a foot on the floor, it was the friday before christmas, everyone was in the festive mood, everyone but us! We met a lovely doctor in velindre called doctor Tillslie he reassured my mother and us family that it was at stage one and that she could undergo an operation in birmingham to remove the cancer, she will be left disabled but we could live with that as long as we still had the queen of our family with us that was all we cared about. Christmas came and went with that horrible C word hanging over us. Then the day after Boxing day the surgeon from Birmingham phoned, he said he could do the operation and explained how difficult it was, we then waited for an appointment to go to birmingham, on the 11th of January 2019. The doctor in Birmingham wasted no time in telling us how major this operation this was and how long it would take my mother to recover both physically and mentally and the fact that she would never make a full recovery, also taking her age into account she was 78 at this point but she was like your average 50 year old up until this point, the operation was going to be a minimum of 15 hours and would require two surgeons. But my mother was so brave she was still up for it she was determined to beat this awful awful disease so we told the doctors to go ahead and plan to do the operation as soon as possible, we came home and waited on our next appointment , we waited and waited watching my mother deteriorate daily, by the time the date for the operation came she was bed ridden needing 24/7 care, a bed down stairs and was taking a cocktail of medication to keep her out of excruciating pain, nevertheless we got her up to Birmingham where she had scans and tests in ready for the operation the following day, we had our bags all packed as we had been told she would have to stay in for a minimum of 5 weeks until she was ready to be transferred to a hospital more local to us, That night march the 6th we settled my mother into her ward and we went to stay in our two bedroom apartment that my brother had booked for us all to say at while my mother was in hospital. The following day we all got up very early all feeling extremely anxious about what was to come, we arrived at the hospital at around 8am my mother was sitting in her bed, she told us that the surgeon who was doing the operation doctor Granger had been to see her and told her that the operation was going ahead as planned that day, we felt relieved but anxious at the same time, we sat at my mothers bed waiting for her to be called to go down to surgery when Dr Granger came back in he said he needed to speak to us in the side room so we got my mother into a wheelchair and made our way to speak to him, this is where our world falls apart he showed us the images on his laptop of the scan that my mother had the previous day, it looked like black and white to me but he went on to explain that the cancer had spread, i can't remember much after that but he told us he could no longer do the operation, and that there was no point because the cancer would be back within 5-6 weeks anyway, so it wasn't worth putting her through it. Where do we go from here ? We drove home from birmingham in silence all absolutely devastated about the news we had received, we contacted Velindre again for another appointment to see what our options were, shortly after we met with dr Tillsly again he told us that she should start radiotherapy treatment that week she will need 6 weeks treatments every week day. At this point she was weak and tired but still she agreed to start the treatments. She started off well saying it was over really quickly and didn't feel a thing that was short lived just two weeks into her treatment, she was in a lot of pain and not passing any urine, she was given a bed on the ward in Velindre, where they treated her and got on top of her pain management, unfortunately while she was in she managed to pick up a nasty chest infection she was put on antibiotics to help fight the infection and was given a nebuliser to use 3 times daily, the nebuliser frightened her it was noisy and made her feel like she was suffocating, so we all took it in turns to sleep at the hospital so that she was never alone, as she gradually went down hill we decided that she no longer wanted the radiotherapy treatments as they were making her weak and unwell. She was then transferred to hospice called Y Bwythyn, she had her own side room and us family could stay there 24/7 the staff were all amazing, she was made to feel as comfortable as possible, then on may 6th 2019 at 3pm she took her last breath with her family around her. She was the heart of our family nothing will ever be the same without my mam with her false nails and endless christmas presents that she had been buying all year round. She lit up the room and didn't hold back if she had something to say, i love you mam i want to do you proud and help raise money for cancer research so we can help find a cure and save lives.