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Make Alysa's final moments comfortable & enjoyable

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I'm Alysa, 51, the photo above was taken 7 years ago when I still believed to live a long and happy life. I have incurable cancer. In July 2017 I went to my family doctor to ask him to remove, what I thought to be a wart on my left labium. Sadly the next day I was in hospital for a biopsy. Week later I heard it was cancer, vulvar carcinoma. The local hospital in Zoetermeer sent me to the university hospital in Leiden, LUMC. They surgically removed the rather big tumour in September that year. The evening before I could go home the gynaecologist came by and told me that it was bigger than they expected. They got it all he said but since it was so big they were worried it might have spread to my lymph nodes. So I needed another surgery a month later. In October they removed all lymph nodes on both sides in my groin. Sadly the right side was severely infected, had to undergo yet another surgery to clean it and attach a vacuum machine to it. I had to stay in hospital for a bit more than 4 weeks. The nurses were the sweetest I ever met, making it less of a burden. Thankfully the cancer hadn't spread to my lymph nodes which meant after healing up I should have a long cancer free life. Of course that was not the case. A year later I felt a pain in my groin on the left side. As if someone was pushing against it causing a bruise. It could be lymph fluid built up they said, so during an ultrasound puncture they removed a lot of fluid and send it to the lab. Was nothing turned out and the pain was gone. Few months later, January 2019, I had another checkup with my gynaecologist and told him the lump was back. He said that happens often, they would drain it completely this time and warned me that this might be something that needs to happen several times a year. Oh goodie. Right after the checkup he sent me upstairs where another doctor would drain the fluid. He removed everything, then checked the ultrasound again to see if he hadn't missed anything. Well he noticed another darker area and removed more fluids from there. They would sent it to the lab. The week after the doctor called me with the lab results. He started with "Normally I would not do this over the phone...". Indeed, it was back and got into the area of my previously removed lymph nodes. In April another surgery was planned. The pain tho got quite bad the weeks before the surgery and begged my family doctor for something stronger than paracetamol and naproxen, I got a few oxycodon. On the morning of the surgery I was rolled into the operating room and the surgeon showed a CT Scan of the area and said something like "Here we can see the size..." and I cut in and told them that it had grown quite a bit since the scan was taken. He then looked at the afflicted area and agreed that it had grown. He then added that he now understood why I needed a heavier painkiller. The surgery went well, took longer than expected since it had grown into a blood vessel but they were able to remove it all. Because they wanted to be sure that it would not come back anymore they told me I should do a 6 week long radiation treatment. It was gruelling on my energy levels. At the end of 2019 the effects of the radiotherapy were still affecting me, healed very slowly and had a bunch of nasty infections. Effects of radiation treatment were almost gone early 2020 but I had told my gynaecologist during a checkup that I had a familiar pain on the left side of my groin. He looked and felt something, a CT scan was scheduled. He also checked everywhere else and did not find anything. When I was in hospital for a week 'cos of yet another infection I got a PET scan. I had already told my gynaecologist that I felt another familiar pain on one of my labia. Not long after I was told the 2 suspect areas were indeed new tumours and that there was a 3rd deeper inside. He then added it was incurable... So here I am, not too long to live anymore, with extra expenses that I can't afford and many more to come. Soon a new bed will be placed in my living room, another round of radiation is coming to help alleviate the pain of yet another tumour which is causing me to not be able to sit anymore. The new bed should help with that. I have many hobbies, have already stopped quite a few of them and now I can't do most of the remaining ones like playing video games, watching TV, drawing, puzzling, etc because I am unable to sit for long. I would be very grateful for any help you can give me, donations will go to paying some debts due to illness and help pay for making changes to my living room like a monitor arm, perhaps a new chair if the radiation is somewhat helpful and any of the other costs this illness gives me. Thank you for reading all this.

Donations 

  • Anonymous
    • €12 
    • 3 yrs

Organizer

Alysa Habraken
Organizer
Benthuizen, NL

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