Susete Isabel, 40, could be forgiven for believing the symptoms that blighted her at night were due to the menopause.
For months, she’d toss and turn suffering hellish night sweats, leading to days plagued by disabling fatigue.
Night sweats and fatigue are, indeed, two of the most well-recognized symptoms of the hormonal change that can happens to a woman between the ages of 40 and 55.
Susete Isabel, 40, of Canada, was diagnosed with stage four follicular lymphoma after mistaking her symptoms for early menopause, drinking, and working too much
Tragically, Susete’s assumption turned out to be a mistake.
In fact, the mother of-two was suffering late-stage blood cancer.
Susete, of Canada, was otherwise healthy when she started experiencing symptoms in September 2023.
It wasn’t just the night sweats, she also noticed sudden weight loss, and an unusually swollen abdomen.
She attributed the bloating to drinking alcohol – and her rapid weight loss to being overworked.
But when she endured four days of ‘excruciating’ pain under her ribs, Ms Isabel was rushed to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma – a type of blood cancer that had spread throughout her body.
The mother-of-two is now urging her followers to not ignore symptoms. ‘Enjoy today because tomorrow isn’t promised,’ she wrote on Instagram
After the diagnosis, it became clear that the niggling pain in her groin, neck and armpit were in fact signs that the cancer was harming her lymph nodes – glands that filter substances out the body.
Now, Ms Isabel is urging her followers to not ignore symptoms, even if they seem mild.
‘Do not ignore what your body is trying to tell you,’ she wrote on Instagram. ‘When s*** hits the fan you’ll have no choice but to make the time.’
Lymphoma is a cancer of the lymph nodes, the body’s disease-fighting network, which includes the spleen, bone marrow, lymph nodes, and thymus gland.
It can occur anywhere in the body, but usually the first sign is swollen lymph nodes around the neck.
Other symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic, include abdominal pain or swelling, chest pain, coughing, trouble breathing, persistent fatigue, fever, night sweats, and unexplained weight loss.
In Ms Isabel’s case, scans revealed she had an enlarged spleen and lymph nodes.
The two main forms are Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
NHL affects around 80,000 people in the US annually and 14,000 in the UK. It kills about 20,000 in the US and nearly 5,000 in the UK.
Hodgkin lymphoma is less common, occurring in about 8,500 Americans and 2,100 Brits. It is responsible for about 900 deaths per year in the US and 310 in the UK.
Ms Isabel was diagnosed with a form of NHL called follicular lymphoma, which grows from the white blood cells B-lymphocytes.
These are usually responsible for making antibodies to fight off illnesses.
According to the Lymphoma Research Foundation, follicular lymphoma ‘is usually not considered to be curable, instead categorized as more of a chronic disease.’
‘Patients can live for many years with this form of lymphoma.’
Ms Isabel’s cancer spread to several organs, including her bone marrow. She endured six rounds of chemotherapy, which she said ‘scared me to the bone’
‘That was scary,’ Ms Isabel wrote on Instagram about her diagnosis. ‘I was told it had spread everywhere, on the groin, arm pits, [upper neck], top and bottom of the diaphragm, and even in the bone marrow.’
‘God only knows for how long I was walking around so sick without knowing. Oblivious to all my symptoms.’
Ms Isabel endured six rounds of chemotherapy, which she said ‘scared me to the bone.’ She finished her treatments on March 1 and is awaiting scans to see if any cancer remains.
In one post from February, she said that about 85 percent was gone.
If the cancer has been killed, Ms Isabel said she will go on maintenance chemotherapy injections every three months for the next two years to keep tumors from growing back.
Ms Isabel is now focused on raising awareness about the symptoms on her Instagram account, which has more than 200,000 followers.
‘Enjoy today because tomorrow isn’t promised,’ she wrote.
Source: Mail Online
