A HEREFORDSHIRE woman has told of her shock at her cancer diagnosis and her fundraising campaign to help mitigate against the effects of it.
Suzy Jarman, 40, from Leominster, was diagnosed with bowel cancer in September 2021 after a period of illness.
Mrs Jarman who also suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, had received infusion treatment for the condition just a month earlier.
She said: "I had been incredibly poorly prior to my diagnosis. I was told by my GP to expect side effects from the MS treatment as it is quite a tough treatment, similar to chemotherapy.
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"However, after a few weeks of severe abdominal pain, it wasn't improving as I would've expected it to, so I went back to my GP, and this led to me going to hospital and finding out about the cancer."
Mrs Jarman said that she is making an active choice to see things from a positive a viewpoint as possible. However, the first few weeks after her diagnosis and the gap before starting her treatment were really difficult.
Five weeks after her diagnosis, she started chemotherapy and the side effects were debilitating.
She said: "It was only a 50% dose due to how weak I was, but it still absolutely knocked me for six. Nothing can ever prepare you for going for chemo."
After three rounds of chemotherapy, she had a re-scan to see how things were going. Unfortunately, the treatment wasn’t being effective enough and the tumour had grown slightly.
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Mrs Jarman channelled all of her energy into researching around the disease to get the best treatment possible.
She said: "I found out that there was a medication combination called The Beacon Doublet that targets the mutation I have and so I asked my oncologist to be changed onto that.
"This is a combination of daily oral tablets and an infusion every two weeks. After two months I was rescanned and discovered I was, at this point, stable with some shrinkage, so the drugs were doing their thing."
But the nature of the disease dictates that this treatment alone might not be enough in the long term.
Mrs Jarman has continued to research her condition and discovered that there are drugs that can be added to her treatments, but these are not funded by the NHS and have to be paid for privately.
Mrs Jarman has launched a GoFundMe page to help with the cost of this additional treatments that she hopes will help her fight the cancer. Due to her MS diagnosis she is unable to claim life insurance and with only one income coming into the family at present, she is looking for donations to help fund her battle.
She said: "Before my diagnosis, I had recently started my own mobile cake making business, which was going really well and was something I really enjoyed.
"I would love more than anything to be able to get back to a position where I am able to start doing that again. Unfortunately, managing this illness is very much a full-time job in itself at the moment and is taking everything out of me."
Mrs Jarman is determined that she won't let cancer beat her and even in her darker days she looks for hope to keep her going.
She said: "I have to keep going both for my sake and for my family. I feel the more positive I can stay about this, the better the outcome will be.
"That's why I won't give up and I keep fighting every day. We won't let the cancer win."
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