Eden Magid’s journey
I am twenty, and I was diagnosed with Germ Cell Ovarian cancer in 2019. This cancer typically impacts young people between the ages of 17-30. I think that every person who battles with cancer, despite the undeserving pain and suffering it elicits, has planted in their soul a story of life. I got the one thing that everyone fears. Even further, I got a type of cancer that makes up roughly 1% of all gynaecological cancers and I was in the 0.001% because I had bilateral tumours.
I’m slightly desensitised to it because I lived it, and still technically live it as a research patient in remission. I want to encourage you not to view cancer as an upsetting fate. It turned out to be my best fate, though I acknowledge the pain and hurt that comes with it for each individual. It was painful for me, but hindsight allows for positivity. Being close to death closed my eyes, and when they reopened different avenues and routes were in front of me. I live now with a deeper understanding of life and a vital degree of empathy for others.
The oncologist who had received my scans told my parents and I that there are simple tumours and complex tumours. Mine were complex; malignant. A student nurse sat in on this appointment, and I can't help but feel that we were all strong and clear-headed for her. I still think about whether that appointment deterred her from specialising in oncology or brought her closer to it. That oncologist is the reason I’m alive, because he sent my file to Charing Cross Hospital, uncertain of what exactly the cancer was. My GP did not know what the mass in my pelvis was, nor did anyone in the A&E department. The doctor assigned to me in the AAU was perplexed, and at first believed the mass to be a bladder related issue and proceeded to drain my bladder. The head gynaecologist and the doctor who did my ultrasound scans whilst I was in the AAU both were puzzled by the large mass. The speed at which the entire situation unfolded was partly responsible for my detached, pragmatic attitude: I was called on a Friday at noon, after being passed through many doctors during the week, and on urgent chemotherapy by six o’ clock. Germ Cell tumours grow very fast, and it took just under a week for a 20cm mass and 12cm mass to grow across my ovaries. The mass stuck out of my abdomen and was easily visible. If you see anything like that... get checked! Trust yourself. If your urine contains blood, if you feel faint, if you suddenly find unfamiliar lumps in your abdomen: seek help. Express concern when your body tells you it is in distress.
My first emergency chemotherapy cycle was interrupted repeatedly by fever sweats, weighing, and machine beeping. Chemotherapy symptoms accumulate, so it wasn't too startling at first, but the environment was jarring; especially for a young person. I was walked into a ward - the average age of which was 40 - where other patients looked at me, and I looked at them, and saw my future. The future was morose at the time. The worst of the treatment took place over the summer, which meant that, aside from my parents, I went through the worst of it alone and those around me rarely saw the inhumane ways in which I was violated by chemicals and doctors alike. To this day, I have gaps in my memory so big that you could make things up to replace the weeks I spent only partially conscious and uncomfortable in hospital rooms. Due to the dangerous nature of removing large tumours that sat on major vessels and arteries, chemotherapy was the first battle, and - with good intentions - the chemotherapy I received certainly threw everything but the kitchen sink at these tumours. My HCG levels and other tumour markers dropped drastically in response; these tumours respond well to treatment but must be caught quickly. When I got to Charing Cross Hospital, to which I owe my life, I was under-packed, underprepared and at stage IIIb.
Upon first noticing an alarming and rapid growth inside of my stomach, I said I wanted to go to the emergency room. My bones told me that something was wrong through some sixth sense type of communication. I am lucky to know myself that well, because it saved my life. Knowing your body is something you should dedicate time towards. There are things that doctors don't tell you when they themselves are scared, but we all knew that another day or two might have altered my prognosis and that the cancer could have spread to my lungs or other parts of my body, had I been left untreated. I received full POMB-ACE chemotherapy following emergency chemotherapy, which was a combination of inpatient and outpatient; a cocktail of about 10/11 drugs. This is not a common treatment; on the POMB cycles the bags of chemotherapy dripped from 6 hours to 24 hours. Vincristine, methotrexate, cisplatin, etoposide, bleomycin and most likely others that I don’t remember. Cycles were immediately one after another, 24/7, one week on, one week off. I say immediately because the week ‘off’ was spent managing and enduring the side effects. Towards the end of POMB-ACE my treatment was switched to TE-TP chemotherapy because I felt I could not handle any more cisplatin. The remainder of my last POMB cycle saw cisplatin being replaced with carboplatin, which is not as violent as the former, to say the least.
The toxicity of my chemotherapy was painstakingly obvious as time went on. The body that I once knew, and recognised alongside with the skin that covered it, deteriorated with every treatment. Anti-nausea pills were the new breakfast lunch and dinner. Medication punctuated my days when chemotherapy did not. One was always on shift. My hair thinned over the months and I spent a lot of time cleaning up violent nosebleeds. The nosebleeds started when I went back to university, which many people attempted to persuade me not to do, including the university itself. Nosebleeds typically were indicative of a low platelet or blood count for me. Bruises on my body were noted, checked; my blood was sticky due to disease but also often fast running because of a lack of platelets. It takes a certain disinterest in your cancer to sit at the pub and have to be dragged out to go to hospital at 9 o’ clock at night for a blood transfusion. It takes a certain interest in yourself, and in life, to refuse to stay overnight once the transfusion finishes at 2am. It takes more than you think to go back to a room, alone, at university, after these odd interruptions, and do all the things you need to do to before going to sleep at 5am as if your life is normal. But... here we are. I honour everyone who fights cancer, and in particular the women who fight gynaecological cancers. We all fight differently but are bound by tenacity. Going back to university was perhaps the best decision I have ever made in my young life. Learning, engaging, listening to other people’s thoughts; it was my way of feeling in control and human. Cancer made me feel violated for a very long time and it did strip my sense of self for at least a year; my blood was not entirely my own most of the time, nor were my platelets or the plasma they both coexisted with. Mentally, I believe adrenaline carried me through cancer, and I slowed down and regrouped once I received an all-clear. My perseverance of school was not without discomfort. I didn't take any time out and I finished the academic year with eyebrows and a first average! If you are young, and you feel that you want to keep going, do it at the right pace for you and take the time to make decisions that are best for your wellbeing. Everyone’s pace is different.
I look at things differently than I otherwise would have, had I not had cancer. Overwhelming amounts of love flowed through me all the time, and often for no reason, once I was given the all-clear. On a bad day I know that I’m alive and that it genuinely counts. I know that my best is good enough, and that is something I may never have grasped. It’s a wonderful lesson to learn (thought I don’t recommend cancer as the best route to learn it.) Once my treatment ended, all of my senses slowly started to come back. On a basic level, orange juice no longer tasted like car keys and old coins; the smell of people’s food stopped making me sick and I could see a lot more clearly with fewer chemicals in my system and improved brain fog. My senses were so messed up that taste resembled a game of twister. I have never fully regained my hearing, and I am only a fraction of the way through full recovery from the toxicity of my chemotherapy. I assumed that surgery would be easy after and in comparison with the chemotherapy I had, but it spooked me just as much. It was a complex surgery; the remaining mass was wrapped around my ovary multiple times. The first time I checked into hospital for my operation, I was discharged after completing the pre-op because of low platelet and blood counts; I repeated the process the following week and thoroughly did not enjoy the problems that arose in the days following surgery, which are different to those that came with chemotherapy. I was lucky to have spotted a problem, lucky to have been treated by a great doctor and lucky to have had a brilliant surgeon; both are a part of the small team that monitor and take care of me permanently.
Anyone who has ever been to university knows that one day you can be on top of the world, and the next you can be crashing and burning. You don’t know how that happens; it just does. Once you leave home, all the small things become your job. Cooking, shopping, managing relationships, continuing to get up every day; even if you just do your shopping and come home, you can find yourself drained and maxed out for the day. Adding daily bone marrow injections and blood thinning injections to the student schedule was definitely interesting! Going to a 9am lecture after being in A&E all night for a sepsis scare and full antibiotics is not your normal university experience, but it became mine. Human beings are geared towards survival; we want to live and adapt. Once the adrenaline wore off, and the cancer was removed from my body, I realised I had an emotional journey ahead of me. I salute all the women who know this journey. Anyone who has ever had cancer knows that one day you can hurt, and the next you can hurt less, but also that a fraction of you remains frightened always. If not frightened, fragile, somewhere deep inside. Those you meet on such a journey will touch your life forever. The other girls I met through this experience deserve the world; from Fiona, who reassured me when I was terrified of starting the cycle she was nearly through, to Amy, a new friend in an unfamiliar world.
I mainly wrote this to share a snippet of my experience with a very rare cancer at a very young age. I also wrote this as a small tribute to everyone who spreads awareness and listens to the sick and to the strong; to the medical and pastoral support that keeps cancer patients going, and to Alex, who did not get as lucky as I did with Germ Cell ovarian cancer but who fought bravely and would want awareness. You are honoured. To all young women: keep an eye out for those alien growths, those pains, the unusual symptoms that startle you. I didn’t want to go and get medical help because I thought that, if nothing was wrong, I would be wasting NHS time. To anyone who is young: you are never wasting time. Time is of the utmost importance and I have known individuals who have had to fight for their diagnosis because it is easy to dismiss that which is unknown and perplexing. Knowing how Germ Cell Ovarian Tumours grow and how they can present themselves can save lives. I certainly have a lot more to learn but going through such a strange experience like rare cancer taught me to let things be simple; it taught me to love and appreciate as much as possible. Cancer is not without it’s hard healing times, and - for the ones with a rare type - cancer doesn’t always leave your life. Bloods every two weeks to monitor tumour markers is a normal for me, as are CT scans, MRI scans and regular conversations with my oncologist and surgeon.
The uncanny is made less frightening with awareness, sharing and kindness. The normal will return, it will adjust, and you will grow. Keep Ovarian Germ Cell awareness circulating!
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