Ellis: My life just completely stopped and they said
you may never play basketball again, you may never live a normal life again.
Obviously I was in massive shock, I was quite, sort of, scared in a way
not knowing really anything about leukemia or chemotherapy or fatigue.
They kept throwing these words out at me and I sort of, just didn't understand any of
them at the time. They said I wouldn't be able to play basketball for three and a half
years, 'cause that's how long my chemotherapy was. I went from playing basketball and doing
my GCSE's to right at the beginning of my treatment I was in hospital for a month and
'cause of my chemotherapy, it suppressed my immune system to basically nothing so I wasn't
allowed to leave the hospital bed, or my room in fact, for the first two or three weeks.
I wasn't even allowed to open the window so I became sort of submerged in this room, which
for someone that is quite outgoing and active to just be sitting in a bed, walking round
a room for 24 hours a day was quite tough to take on my mind more than my body.
My fatigue started from pretty much day one, I was sleeping a long time, the majority of the day and then
from then on when I started having the full-on chemotherapy, they started mentioning this
word fatigue. You know, at the time I sort of took it, I was like 'OK, I've got fatigue,
this is what it is'. And especially when it came to maintenance, I started to feel the
effects of fatigue and how I would wake up just randomly one day and feel just as if
I needed to go back to bed. I was super tired just all the time, I would... if I had to
get up early one day, I would be in bed by, sort of, twelve o'clock having a two hour
nap or I'd go to school and do two hours of school and then I'd come home and pass out, asleep.
I made sure I planned my days, I knew I should still push through the boundaries,
not too much where it became a health issue, but to the point where I knew I would live
a normal life and be happy. So us, as a family, we made sure that I kept on doing things 'cause
my mum, she was saying 'fatigue breeds fatigue'. So if I didn't do anything, I'd feel worse
the next day and more tired. I made sure I got out of bed and I was up and about the
house or went for a short walk just to make sure that I was keeping myself active.
Lance: It was very difficult if I'm being honest because I've obviously known you as a very
active and very busy sports person over the years and when we used to go away, you wouldn't
sit still, you'd be like (gestures) because you weren't doing any sport so to see you
being very lethargic and even struggling to get in and out of bed was very difficult.
But, you had that good sport brain, the focus of trying to get through it
and be positive and that's really key, is being positive.
Ellis: I had to watch my diet and certain things I was eating,
I had to think about what I was allowed to do, I went back to the
gym to do very light resistance work to build a little bit of base muscle back but I had
to make sure I did that on off-peak times. So I spoke to the gym and said 'when's busy,
when's not busy, when's a good time' so that there's less infection risk because there's
less people that have used the equipment and there's less people in the gym. Basketball
was taken away from me so I took up golf to keep my competitive spirit, to keep my sport
mentality going because I wasn't allowed the impact of basketball. So I wasn't allowed
to go clubbing or anything but I then went and got myself a cinema card and I was going
weekly to that. So I would go on a Monday, when there's no one there and I'd go to a
film that's maybe at the end of it's release date or whatever so there's no one in the
cinema so again, there's no infection risk. A lot of people just shut down and say there's
no way of me living a normal life when actually there is, you've just got to find that way
of doing it. It makes it bearable for the time you're on treatment.
I finished treatment on the 25th June 2016 after completing three and a half years of chemotherapy.
My body wasn't in great shape, but I knew I had the goal of going to uni and getting basketball back.
I started at Loughborough University on the 4th September 2016. I was terrified,
I was not ready to leave home, it was not a good time. But I knew that leaving home
and getting a new set of friends that had no idea of what happened previously, they
were treating me as if I was a normal kid. I was doing two half days of uni, really,
and at the end of both of them, I was going back to bed straight away and sleeping for
two or three hours. I got used to that, I then stepped it up to three half days, once
I got used to that, I stepped it up to two full days and then I slowly progressed and
by Christmas I was doing a full uni schedule, no problem.
And on top of that I was doing training for basketball.
It's been what, four or five years since I played a competitive
basketball game so that's the final thing to tick off and once that's done and everything
there's nothing that cancer has got hold of anymore.
Skye: It feels like it's another family, it doesn't feel like it's
connected to us anymore. The amount we've changed and
moved on as people, I feel like we're completely different now, and for the better as well.
Lance: You're almost drawing a line under it and moving on, it's sort of like, yes it
happened, it was one of those things and now you're moving forward.
Ellis: But at the same time, I don't look badly upon it, I'm quite happy it happened in a way.
We've all moved on and are better for it, we're better people than we were before we went in. We don't look
at it in a way that makes us feel resentful for anything or we never say 'why us?'.
We just accept it and enjoy what we've got.