Unstoppable Testimonies

Hello! I’m Lucía and I’m from Bilbao. It all started with pain in a localised area of my stomach that prevented me from living a normal life. After two months of complaints, doctors and tests, only receiving the answer of an inflammation of the stomach, on the 29th of October my life changed completely. I had been found to have a gastric ulcer and a biopsy returned a gastric B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma result.

When you are only 2 weeks away from your 18th birthday and life gives you such a hard blow, all you can think about is that everything is falling apart, that there is no turning back and fear takes over.

I shaved off my hair, got my reservoir and got down to work. I had begun the hardest battle of my life, with all the complications that came with it: the hospital admissions, a pulmonary thromboembolism, the pain and the myriad of side-effects after each session. Every day I woke up wondering why me, missing my hair, afraid to look at myself in the mirror, but, above all, afraid that the nightmare would never end. 

Only two chemotherapies away from completing the course, and with a good prognosis, all I can think about the whole journey and how hard it has been. Living through this has not taken anything away from me, on the contrary, it has given me hope, strength and the will to live, it has really taught me what life is all about and I know that one day all of this will be curable. So I just want encourage everyone who is going through something similar. Because we are all stronger than any bug! 

Lucía