24-48H

I'm Vanessa. I'm a small town girl from Sweden. I have lived for 33 years. In those years I've experienced many, many beautiful things. I have grown up in a loving family, I have had the opportunity to travel to so many beautiful places around the world. I've been fortunate to build amazing relationships with people I share many beautiful memories with, I've built a nice career and mothered the two best dogs ever to exist! My travels eventually brought me to Ireland where I ended up staying for 10 years of my life. My life drastically changed in 2017 and this blog is written to share the story about the most traumatic event of my life. That thing that happened in May 2017. There's no point in beating around the bush, it all started a little over 1 year ago. My life took a pretty sharp turn..or more like a full on collision that I still haven't fully come to terms with yet.  I'd started getting migraines that was out of this world, By now,  I definitely know what pain is and I would still mark these headaches as 10 out of 10 on the fuuuucking- hell-this-is-sore-scale. I went to the doctor several times during this time and was put on quite heavy painkillers and started seeing a physio who had seen this problem before... muscle spasms that causes headaches. We did a lot of work over a few weeks and by the time I was going for my holidays I felt fine ..for a little while. I had just come back from a week in Malta, it was an unpleasant trip for many reasons but mostly because I fell very ill. I had eaten mussels for dinner and shortly after I started what I thought was the food poisoning from hell, it lasted for days. It eventually stopped and it was time to go home again. My vision had started getting very blurred but I was thinking that the heat and the vomiting had taken its toll on me. Once I was back in Ireland and back working my sight hadn't improved, I started changing the font size on my computer to be able to see what I was typing. I also started getting ill again, after a few pushes from friends and family I finally went to my GP, I could barely see the top letters on the eye test board and I would have had a perfect vision before. My GP told me to go to A&E immediately . Being dramatic as always, I thought this was insane and catastrophic. I hadn't been to A&E since preschool years.. I'm never sick!  .. Oh If I'd only known what was coming my way.  I arrived at he Regional I hospital in Limerick, first I met with a young doctor who examined my eyes. He flashed a bright lamp into my eyes, did a few more checks, asked me to clap and turn my hands as fast as I could. He asked me if I'd taken any recreational drugs. "What!? No never.. I barely even drink alcohol". He asked me to walk across  the floor and to stand on one foot and keep my balance .He went off to discuss with his colleague who also came to ask a couple of more strange questions. They left and came back to say I was going to be seen by an eye doctor. It all went very fast from this moment on.. The eye specialist did some more tests, kept flashing that bright beaming lamp in my eyes. "Am I going blind?"  I asked nervously "We will have to finish the examination before I can say anything".  He said with quite an abrupt voice and I thought ..Why is he being so sharp? what is going on? "I  can see that there is something pressing against your optical nerve but I don't know what it is so you will go back to A&E and they will send you for a scan" ...at this point I was terrified that I was going blind but my mind didn't really think further than that, I didn't connect all the odd things that had been happening lately and all of those symptoms going back months.  "There is nothing wrong with me..I'm never sick and I have a very healthy lifestyle. I couldn't be sick, ever. never.. I'm not going blind...Did i get my drink spiked in Malta without knowing it?..but i didn't drink more than a few glasses...No... this must be some sort of an overreaction, they'll let me home soon"  My mind was working hard reasoning with me, telling me not to worry as I was going into one of those x-ray tunnels I've only seen on television before. A doctor called me as soon as I arrived back from the CT-scan "Vanessa, do you have anyone with you here today?" "Yes my friend is here, he is waiting in the hall" "Do you want to call him in here because I'm going to share some very difficult news with you" I'm so grateful I had my friend Timmy with me this day, It upsets me to think of people who don't have anyone to support them when being told he things that I was about to hear.. "We have looked at the scan and we've found that you have a quite large tumour in your brain and it's causing high pressure that is a very serious danger" Silence. Tearing seconds of silence. That type of silence they sometimes capture in movies when everything moves in slow-motion. That exact silence...the only difference was that this was real life, not a fictional movie. She continued; "Do you have your family here in Ireland?" "No, they're all in Sweden" "You might want to contact them and ask them to come here. She went quiet for a moment before she continued.. "There is an ambulance here to take you to Cork university hospital and you will have surgery tonight"  "Am I going to die? "There is a risk of that" I don't remember much detail from the last few months  but this room, that  hospital bed without any bed sheets on ,that black, bare plastic mattress, the lovely doctor who had first been so upbeat, so full of energy but now sat there with worry across her face..this memory is crystal clear and it has been on replay every day since. "In worst case scenario..how much time do I have left?" "It could be 24-48 hours"