Elenid's Cancer Story
Ten years ago, shortly after her 21st birthday, Elenid started her cancer journey for stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Her symptoms were recognised by her GP, following an X-ray to understand why her cough wasn’t going away after treatment for a chest infection.
Elenid was treated at the Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT) unit at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, specially designed for 14–25-year-olds, attending for fortnightly chemotherapy for 6 months, under the care of her Consultant, Dr Clare Rowntree.
Being treated at TCT meant that Elenid and her family were able to build a network of support from not only the staff at the unit but other young patients and their families from across South Wales.
In July 2025, Elenid will be celebrating 10 years in remission. Her celebrations every year focus on how she has been able to do everything she imagined she would do with her life before her cancer diagnosis.
She got married to AJ and had 2 beautiful children. They bought a house and had amazing holidays.
Although she had to defer her PGCE course for a year to complete her treatment, she went back to university 2 months after treatment to complete her teacher training and started a brilliant career as a primary school teacher.
Reflecting on her cancer journey, she has the following advice to others.
“It’s so important that I’m living not surviving”
“Take your time recovering. Don't try to ignore what just happened. Listen to your body.
Get therapy, ask for the support and use the support offered, from your healthcare providers and the charities. Its ok to need support well after your treatment ended.”
“The fatigue is something I didn’t expect. I started my PGCE full time just 2 months post treatment, and it was challenging. I wanted to crack on with my life, and I did struggle, but I didn’t want to lose more money and more time deferring for another year, I wanted to start my career.”
“Keep active and eat well, take every opportunity to have cancer screening tests, smear tests and mammograms are so important and make ringing your GP for an appointment your priority if you are worried.”
“Listen to your Doctors and Nurses. I was given some firm words from my GP that attending my first diagnostics appointment urgently the next day was much more important than heading to London for a couple of days, which is what my 21 year old self really wanted to do.”
“I cannot exaggerate enough how amazing my care was and how amazing the people in the NHS are, even if the system is under resourced. The staff on my journey from my GPs and the chest consultant who referred me, through to the nurses on the ward where I stayed following my surgery who got me a private room because I was so much younger than all the other patients in the general ward, through to my consultants and the team at TCT.”
Elenid also chose to take part in a clinic trial during her treatment; “The clinical trial gave me a sense of doing something good with a bad situation, and made this purposeful.”
“The point of my trial was to look at a treatment that was potentially kinder to the body, with less nasty side effects and better outcomes. It was ten years to track longer term outcomes, such as how my body coped with pregnancies etc.”
“Being part of the trial gave me such re- assurance, I got extra CT scans and checks, which were re-assuring once you get over the test anxiety!”
“I had my special clinical trials nurse Katja Williams, who was there for me all the time, through treatment and through these 10 years. I’ll have my final follow up with her in the summer. She’s given me great consistency of care and a contact when I was worried.”
“This is such a momentous milestone, both for me and my family, and for cancer research.”