My mum keeps having a go at me for not updating this. Apologies.

Today actually marks the one year anniversary of when I found the lump in my neck. I remember it very clearly as if it was yesterday (how cliche I know). I remember feeling it on my neck and ‘facebook chatting’ (how very 2011) Soph to see if she was awake and ask if I could come up to her room so she could have a look.

I went straight up and instantly knew from Soph’s reaction that it probably wasn’t any good. Soph stayed up researching it and I went to the doctors first thing the next day. The following month after the discovery is a bit of a blur. 

Recently I’ve had a lot going on with finishing uni and I can now finally say I am no longer a student. It was a very stressful and (typically me) rushed experience trying to get all my work in, but it’s finally all done and I’m proud of the work I submitted. Now it is just the agonising wait until I get my results.

I’ve started looking for a job and had a phone interview for a job I really want. I got through that fine, but have to have a face to face interview that involves a one to one, a maths test and a presentation with mood boards. To say I’m nervous is an understatement. I wont give too much away because I don’t want to jinx it, but I will fill you in as soon as I know anything. 

I also got my scan results and everything is still fine. It was such a relief because honestly, I had convinced myself it was going to be bad news. I need to stop putting myself through the unnecessary stress, but it’s really hard not to. Being cancer-free is not only difficult to adjust to, but also difficult to accept.

My nurse said that the mass of dead tumours/scar tissue had reduced by around 20%. Which is great news. A measurement that was last time 9 cm, is now 8.1 cm. Everything is still shrinking and there is no active cancer, even though I’m convinced sometimes I can feel it growing in my chest. 

In other news, my main focus at the moment is being happy and keeping myself happy. I’ve turned 23 and it’s time to focus on myself and my own enjoyment of life. I keep finding myself very up and down at the moment, which I then start to feel guilty about.

I feel guilty because after the last year I’ve had, which should have been spent miserable because I was going through such a difficult time, I’ve actually found I’m more up and down now - after it’s all over.

I feel guilty because I shouldn’t be unhappy. I should be appreciating life now and making the most of it. I should be savouring every moment and should be aware of how precious life is and how lucky I am to be here.

I do have lots of fun and exciting things to look forward to though. I want this summer to be the best. I’ve got Slam Dunk festival this weekend, jubilee celebrations, my holiday in Gran Canaria (oh MY GOD do I need a holiday), a friend’s wedding, Blink 182 at Brixton in July and Bestival in August. What’s there to be sad about hey?!

So there we have it. Happy Jen from now on. So if anyone sees me with anything other than a smile on my face, you have the right to make me do ten star jumps.

Oh and for anyone who wants to see a hair update, here’s one. I had to take some photos today for my friends uni project so excuse the cheesy smile. I had it cut last weekend so it’s probably a bit shorter than you might expect, but here it is:

from Jennifer with love

Something I wrote for my Fashion Freelancer unit at uni. I chose to write a feature suitable for Stella magazine, which is a weekend supplement of The Telegraph.

The 17th of June 2011 was the day my life changed forever. I was going into my final year of university, enjoying being twenty-two and looking forward to a summer of fun with my friends. However, finding out I had fifteen centimetres of tumours in my chest and discovering it was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma was one of the most shocking revelations to have to cope with. Cancer? Me? Surely not.

I have to admit that the first thing that crossed my mind wasn’t actually my health, but my hair. My beautiful long hair that I’d loved, nurtured and grown for years was about to be reduced to dust in a matter of weeks. The same hair that I would get in a strop with my hairdresser if she dared to cut more than an inch off was soon to be no more. Worst of all, it was completely out of my control.

I cried and cried and cried. My Dad told me to not be so silly; my Mum bought me a number of funky turbans to try and appease me and my best friend Soph sobbed as clumps of my beautiful locks began to fall out in my hands. Being a fashion conscious girl, one of the most heart-breaking moments was watching my old identity slip away. Cancer had a grip of my insides, and now it was claiming my outsides.

The day that I decided to finally bite the bullet and shave off the remaining patchy clumps was one of the most memorable days throughout the whole whirlwind cancer experience. Strangely, it wasn’t a sad occasion like you might expect, but a liberating and happy event. I sat in the sunshine and each of my closest girlfriends shaved a section in turn. It was as if it was a ceremony and we were bidding farewell to a close friend.

After the job was done and as soon as I nervously looked in the mirror and my ‘new’ look reflected back at me, most of my insecurities melted away and I had confirmation staring back at me that I didn’t look like Bruce Willis’ identical twin as I’d previously expected I would. I was still me; just a little more streamline.

Even though I felt comfortable with my new do, I didn’t have the confidence to face the outside world with it, and in the months that followed I shielded my shiny head with my new best friend, my fabulous auburn wig. I loved my wig like a mother loves her child, and the two of us were inseparable until finally, a few months after treatment, little sprouts of my former glory started reappearing on the top of my head.

With roughly a centimetre of fluff and with the help, reassurance and little push in the right direction from my friends as well as countless cocktails, I finally decided to unveil myself to the outside world. The outpour of support and love for the new crop from those who knew me was overwhelming.

However, regardless of how many compliments I got and how many people told me that it suited me, I still didn’t feel one hundred per cent myself. The only comparison I can make is that it was like when your friends get you to try on an outfit that isn’t very ‘you’. It doesn’t matter how many times they tell you that you look fabulous, you just want to throw on that jumper and leggings that you know so well.

Just as I was coming into my own and accepting my new look, my biggest fear faced me: a comment from a stranger about my hair. It happened as I was having drinks in East London, which is somewhere that I would have considered to be more accepting of people with a different look. A rather tiddly gentleman who had had one too many drinks after work on a Friday night approached me and my friend that I was out with.

He proceeded to ask my friend, “Why are you so beautiful?” and ever the charmer, he turned to me and said, “and why are you such a lesbian?”

Within seconds I had floods of tears streaming down my face and I turned and walked away. How could someone so ignorantly make a comment like that to a girl who’s just trying to have fun on a night out? I turned back around, strode up to him, and told him exactly why I had a “lesbian” haircut. Let’s just say his jaw hit the floor, and he speedily exited to the nearest tube station to take him home to bed, tail between his legs.

The following night I was back on my party horse and a girl came up to me in my hometown. She asked to take my photo and said I had a really interesting look and that it was for her photography project. I then overheard her say to one of her friends that she thought I was beautiful.

What I’ve come to realise is this: bald IS beautiful. Women who choose to wear their baldheads with pride do it as a sign of their courage and strength, and The Voice’s Beverly McClellan is a prime example of this. I couldn’t be happier seeing this wonderfully audacious and extremely talented woman wear her bald head with pride and get on stage and sing her heart out in front of the whole nation on a Saturday night.

She’s helping change attitudes and break the stigma attached to baldness, and prove that you can be bald, you can be brave and you most certainly can be beautiful.

from Jennifer with love

Twitter: fromjennifer

New tumblr: http://jennifercarruthers.tumblr.com

from Jennifer with love

Looking at pictures of me completely bald now really freaks me out. It makes me feel so uncomfortable and I keep thinking “did I ACTUALLY look like that?”. This one definitely freaks me out the most. I look really ill and sort of resemble The Demon Headmaster.

In other news, I have my next scan coming up on the 30th April. It was supposed to be at the beginning of this month but they scheduled it wrong and it had to be pushed back. This is kind of long because every time I have a scan coming up I get this overbearing feeling of apprehension, and so this time the feeling has had to last a little longer. 

I was also supposed to get the results the following week, but that’s the week of all my third year deadlines, so I asked if I could push it back a week. I think I will have enough on my mind that week as it is!

I’m thinking about it a lot at the moment and even had a dream about it the other night. In my dream my nurse told me that I was lying wrong in my scan so they couldn’t get a clear image (kind of like when the baby is positioned wrong in a pregnancy scan!?), but they were pretty sure it had come back. I started crying in my dream and was just saying “but what about my hair, I can’t lose my hair again, it’s taken me months to get it to this length!” I even woke up actually crying. 

Positive thinking though. I’m sure it will all be fine and we will find out soon enough. The further away from treatment I am the more worried I get. I guess it’s because I’m “out on my own” again and don’t have the constant reassurance of a check up every two weeks. 

But seriously though, if I get ill again, WHAT ABOUT MY HAIR?! 

from Jennifer with love

Beautiful.

from Jennifer with love