A BRAVE 22-year-old from Redditch has shared her story as a cancer patient to mark Blood Cancer Awareness Month and the upcoming World Lymphoma Day.
Laura Balàzs, whose cancer has now gone into remission, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in October 2018 after months of coughing and notable weight loss.
The student from Batchley said: “Not long after this I had started chemotherapy, which was awful to say the least. Then I got a Hickman Line fitted in my chest.
“Everything was going really well except my tumour didn’t shrink, it started growing.
“I got transferred from hospital to hospital and then ended up in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
“At this stage I was not well and I started getting breathless. On the 31st of December 2018, when we were celebrating New Year’s Eve, I became really unwell, so much so that the next day my parents had to rush me to the QE.
“I got a bed up on the YPU (Young Persons Unit) and they did a bunch of tests, but I was becoming more and more breathless.
“They thought I was having a panic attack, they put me on oxygen but that didn’t help. All I remember from that night is that I was crying, screaming, and panicking as I couldn’t breathe."
Hospital staff asked Laura if she wanted her parents near, but she said: “no I’m a big girl I’m going be okay.”
Laura says that on January 2, 2019 her heart stopped for around half an hour. Doctors had to use a defibrillator to revive her.
“While all this was going on, they had called my parents and told them to come in. I cannot imagine what my mum felt when she walked into the room,” she said.
She was later put in a medically induced coma, where she woke up 14 days later not remembering what happened. Although she did not suffer brain damage, Laura had to learn to walk again.
She was then given a different type of chemotherapy treatment which proved to be successful.
Doctors told Laura in March this year that her cancer is now in remission.
She is looking forward to starting a college course in theatrical makeup at South and City College Birmingham.
Blood Cancer Awareness Month takes place every September and World Lymphoma Awareness Days takes place on Tuesday, 15.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here