hello, my name is Cristy; I am here today to ask for support; until a few months ago, I was studying full time a bachelor of nursing science at university whilst working two jobs, one as an AIN ( assistant in nursing in an age care facility)
My second job was doing care support for a beautiful autistic girl.
I was also captain of my amazing netball team and enjoyed playing every Monday night.
On 26/06/22, for no apparent reason at the time, I fell over serverly, hitting my head on the concrete and being knocked unconscious. My friends said they heard the loudest crack when my head hit the ground. I am 6ft2, so that is a long way to fall. When I came to several moments later, a woman had me sitting up against a wall and was wiping the blood from my head and eye area, telling me I had a large hematoma and advising me to go straight to the hospital. My friends took me to the hospital; I was in shock and scared and asked the nurses to please scan my head because several years earlier, I had been a victim of a random attack on the street from several men who punched me, knocking me out, I fell back and had a cracked skull and bleeding on the brain and was in the hospital for a week. The pain I felt was much like what I had experienced back then. Unfortunately, the nurses must have been understaffed; they refused to do the scan and just sent me away.
The following days, I stayed in bed, sleeping almost all day and night; until several days later, a dear friend called me and heard in my voice how unwell I was, I was expressing how the pain was not going away, and I felt like my head was going to explode. My friend took me to the doctor, where she wrote a referral to the hospital to do a scan.
The hospital doctor came to me and explained I had a brain tumour and that it needed to be operated on in the immediate future.
I had this feeling for years trying to tell my doctors something was not quite right; I was feeling so exhausted and full of fatigue, and I had unexplained weight gain no matter how healthy I would eat and how super active I was, with intermitted fasting and a keto diet, with the doctors telling me to eat less or be more active, or it was part of getting older.
Since the diagnosis, I have lost my jobs as I am a liability if something happens to me whilst working. The workplaces do not want to be held accountable. My symptoms have worsened over the past couple of months, with chronic headaches, nausea and vomiting; sometimes, I become unsteady when walking. I have difficulty thinking, speaking, and losing part of my peripheral vision from the tumour pushing against the optic nerves. My memory is impaired more and more every day. I feel so sad when friends tell me something they have already said, and I can't remember it. I feel like the life I have worked so hard at building up and doing all the right things has been taken away from me. I feel so frightened and uncertain about my future. Some days I am still in so much disbelief, full of anxiety and fear, and there is so much unknown, and it's all out of my control. I have had several procedures over the years that the doctors have made mistakes; I was born slightly deaf in my right ear; the doctors tried to fix it when I was a little girl, and they put bacteria in my ear whilst operating, which infected my ear and created a hole in my ear drum and made me completely deaf.
In my early 20s My appendix burst and they removed them, but a week later, I fell ill again; they had left some puss in my abdominal area, so they had to open me up again and remove it.
When I had my son, he was 10pound10. They should of know it was not going to be a natural birth. They put me through 26 hours of induced excruciating labour until my baby became stressed; an emergency C-section was performed, and they still could not get him out as he was stuck; I was close to having a blood transfusion, my body so cold and shaking on the table for so long after.
My point is there have been more stuff ups than fixes, and this is my brain they want to operate on, so I am terrified.
I want to try stem cell technology; this treatment has been applied in treating brain tumours mainly because of the ability of stem cells able to infiltrate into regions within the brain where tumour cells migrate.
Before this diagnosis, I was already struggling financially due to being a full-time student; with all the specialist doctor appointments travelling quite a distance, hospital car parking is costly. Extra medicines I have needed since the diagnosis. I have had to move home due to not being able to afford the rental my son, and I was in. The doctors are talking about chemo or radiation after the surgery as they cannot remove it all. I will need to put a ramp in the house at my friend's home for me to have access after the operation. This is just the tip of the ice burg with what is ahead of me; I am frightened of financial debts spiralling out of control and leading to more increased anxiety; it is tragic to endure the non-physical effects of a brain tumour, which will have a damaging impact on my health and wellbeing with an immune system already engaged in fighting off this dreadful disease.
Please help me get through this battle so I can then return it and pass it on by completing my degree, as it will be an honour to help others with empathy, loving care and support through their ill health and time in need.