‘It felt like someone had got the remote and pressed fast-forward by mistake’, a young cancer survivor shares his story

A young cancer survivor is helping to raise awareness of the disease in teenagers and young adults.

Ross Long, 26, from Acre Lane, Brixton was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer, in July 2013 when he was aged 16.

Mr Long is now an illustrator and he is sharing his story for Teenagers and Young Adult Cancer Awareness Month this April.

Mr Long can recall the moment he was given the devastating news.

He said: “Everything kind of went blurry. I couldn’t hear the doctors saying it was aggressive but treatable, though thankfully my parents were listening.

“It felt like someone had got the remote and pressed fast-forward by mistake. Everything around me was imploding.”

Mr Long first noticed something was wrong the morning of his last GCSE exam, having woken up with a stomach ache he put down to something he’d eaten or cramps.

During his exam he was sick twice, and suspected he had a bug.

He managed to attend Glastonbury festival later that week, but things soon worsened.

He said: “By the last night, I was in agony and came home early.”

Still in excruciating pain two days later, his parents took him to A&E.

An ultrasound revealed what was thought to be an intussusception, where the intestine slides into an adjacent part of the intestine and can often block food or fluid from passing through.

Mr Long was told by his medical team that they needed to do some assessments before deciding on the next steps.

After 10 days in hospital, Mr Long was discharged but almost as soon as he arrived home he was called back in and told to bring his family.

He said: “Obviously, when you hear those words, you join the dots and assume bad news.”

When they arrived at the hospital, doctors said they had found a cancerous tumour during the operation.

He quickly began chemotherapy treatment.

He said: “I didn’t feel too bad until after the first couple of rounds of chemo. But after that, I began being sick maybe 20, 30 times a day and even the smell of food would send me to the toilet.

“As treatment went on, I started to fully loose my hair, which as a young person, was a really big thing.

“I think that was the moment when I was like, ‘this is all really real now’.

He added: “I used to draw a lot and have always had a passion for drawing, but that all just left me for six months.”

When treatment finished, he was still suffering heavily from its effects, including damage to his kidneys. 

He said: “The doctors told me they caught it at just the right time, before the tumour grew too much.

“On paper, I’d been cured, but I constantly felt like I was dealing with the fears of relapse and the unprocessed trauma and it’s still something I’m battling now.”

Mr Long is now working with Teens and Young Adults with Cancer (TYAC) and echoes their calls for any young person worried about their health to see a doctor straight away.

He added: “It’s a five-minute conversation, which just might save your life. You can catch things early if you do have cancer.”

For more information visit, https://www.tyac.org.uk

Pictured Top: Ross Long, far left, at school prom with his friends weeks before he started treatment (Picture: Ross Long)