My GP told told me I had a calcium deficiency — but it was aggressive brain cancer

This post originally appeared on news.com.au and is republished here with permission. 

It started with sleepless nights and a constant feeling of being distressed. Then I started to lose sensation in the right side of my body; I kept bumping into things because my right leg wouldn’t keep up with me, my right arm was unable to hold up my handbag, I was struggling to use my hands to type (being a journalist, this was particularly difficult) and some days, I couldn’t even apply mascara.

Then came the horrible headaches (I kept seeing flashing lights), loss of concentration and losing my words — literally. I remember how embarrassed I felt when my boss said ‘Have a great weekend’ and I couldn’t say anything back — not because I didn’t have a witty answer, but because I couldn’t actually find the words for “Thank you. You too.”

What was wrong with me?

I went to the GP — several times.

The first time was in November, when the sleepless nights started. I’ve always been a sound sleeper, but suddenly I could only get two or three hours of sleep per night. My GP sent me home with a prescription for Stilnox, highly addictive sleeping tablets.

I went back to my GP a month later. The sleeping pills weren’t helping, instead, I was having heart palpitations around the clock and was constantly distressed. This time, he prescribed me antidepressants. I kept thinking, ‘I don’t feel depressed. That’s not it.’

The third time I went was the week before Australia Day. I was still not sleeping, I was still constantly feeling agitated and now I had also lost the feeling in my right side to the point that I couldn’t write with a pen anymore.

I even grabbed my GP’s pen to demonstrate how my right hand struggled to grab it, and how I couldn’t use the pen to write with.

First diagnosis: Calcium deficiency

My GP said the loss of sensation in my arm was due to calcium deficiency, gave me a referral for a blood test and booked me in to see a psychologist.

I trusted my GP, whom I’d been going to for years and who discovered my thyroid cancer in 2009 when I’d only come in for a Pap smear. Surely he would investigate further if he thought it was something serious?

So there I was, the morning after Australia Day — after months of not knowing what was wrong with me, just knowing something was — feeling worse than ever. I texted my manager from bed saying I felt too unwell to come in, hoping she wouldn’t think I was just hung-over.

Surely this diagnosis wasn’t right?

When I got up I had to run straight to the bathroom and vomit. I had only had one glass of wine to drink the previous day, so I knew it wasn’t the alcohol.

I called my GP and booked an appointment with him that same afternoon — this was getting worse, surely it couldn’t just be calcium deficiency?

I crawled back into bed and my cat Boris cuddled up unusually close to me. My husband Harry observed as Boris put his soft paw on my head, and looked at him with his grave, green cat eyes. Still to this day, Harry says he has never seen Boris give him such an odd look.

My husband suddenly said: “We’re not going to the GP, we’re going to the emergency department.”

Too sick to protest, I got up and off we went. We waited for three hours before I was brought in for a CT scan.

Our cat Boris sensed something was wrong

I’ll never forget the look on the doctor’s face when he pointed to the big, black blob on my brain, describing the “growth” as “very concerning”. Harry didn’t even look surprised — he knew something was seriously wrong with me.

I was in shock, but at the same time I was relieved — I wasn’t just imagining things! Also, I sent a grateful thought to my cat, Boris.

An ambulance rushed me to St George Hospital, and I had surgery the next day. I woke up in the intensive care unit with a big bandage wrapped around my head.

The surgeon said he had managed to remove 90 percent of the “growth”. The remaining 10 percent was “in a bad spot”, he said, and removing it could have made me paralysed.

I rang my mum, who lives in Sweden where I was born and raised, and managed to tell her what had happened without crying. The “growth” that had been removed was sent to a lab for testing. I was discharged, convinced that it was a low-grade cancer, if it was even cancer at all.

Four days later we were asked to come back to the hospital and speak to the surgeon — he had the results from the lab. As he came to get us in the waiting room, I smiled as I greeted him, but he avoided looking me in the eye and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s bad’.

He explained that I have Glioblastoma Multiforme stage 4, the biggest cancer killer in people under 40. I’ll be 32 in June. “I’m sorry,” he added. To remove the remaining 10 percent of what we now knew was a cancerous tumour, he booked me in for a second surgery that same week.

Why me?

When we left the surgeon’s office, I started crying until I couldn’t breathe. It felt so unfair. Why me? There’s a lot if cancer in my family — my sister had a less serious brain tumour six years ago and eight rounds of chemotherapy made her sterile. My dad, niece, uncle and grandmother all died from it.

My husband, Harry, hugged me and said “We have to stay strong”. The second surgery managed to remove the remaining tumour. Even so, I was prescribed six weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy — indefinitely.

My hair soon started falling out. I cried when I saw all the hair in my brush. My husband shaved it that night, and even offered to shave his own hair off.

Since I put up the first picture on Facebook of me without hair, lots of people have emailed and texted. Old acquaintances that I haven’t spoken to in years (I don’t even know why we’re friends on Facebook) have written messages about wanting to catch up.

I don’t feel brave

My friends have rallied around me, and two of my best friends even flew over from Scotland and Sweden. They say I’m brave. I don’t feel brave. I’m only doing what you would have done if you were in my shoes.

And that is to put up a fight. I am doing everything my doctors and oncologists are telling me to do, and with their consent and after having done heaps of research and receiving recommendations from other cancer survivors, I am also getting acupuncture, taking Chinese herbal supplements, sticking to organic foods and avoiding sugar.

According to statistics, 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.

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.

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