It was November last year when Sydney woman Boel Eriksson, 31, first suspected something was seriously wrong with her.
Suffering from insomnia and a constant feeling of being distressed, she visited her GP, only to be prescribed highly addictive sleeping tablets and sent away, she writes on news.com.au.
A month later, she returned. The sleeping pills hadn’t made a difference and she was now experiencing more symptoms, including heart palpitations. This time, her GP diagnosed her with depression, prescribed medication and sent her away again.
But things kept getting worse. By mid-January she had lost feeling in the right side of her body, was struggling to remember basic words and was suffering debilitating headaches.
Calcium deficiency was diagnosed and Boel was given a referral for a blood test. A week later, she was in the emergency room after her husband insisted they take action in the face of her mounting and worsening symptoms.
A CT scan revealed Boel had stage 4 brain cancer. She was rushed to another hospital in an ambulance and had surgery the next day, followed by a second surgery.
She is now undergoing chemotherapy and radiation therapy in a big to beat the disease, but she admits the odds are not on her side.
“The chances are slim that I’ll make it to the five-year mark, where people with cancer magically return to having the same life expectancy as everyone else,” she writes on news.com.au.
“But I say screw you statistics (we all know they are boring). I will do everything I can, and I won’t give up without a fight.”
