Who the hell are you then?

My biography

I'll give it to you straight

Rossi, Sophia Rossi. 19 years of age and to be honest I'm constantly thinking about what I'm going to eat next, I'm doing it right now. Interesting things about me are that I have 6 sisters and 1 brother, I can touch my nose with my tongue and I was voted 32nd in the TAB's 2018 top 250 most influential students. My hobbies are running, lacrosse, cooking, drawing and going to the pub with mates - don't worry this isn't my French oral. A pretty normal 19 year old girl. Oh but wait, I nearly forgot to tell you, I have cancer.

Stage 2 Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I was diagnosed on the 21st January when I was half way through my second year at the University of Exeter Cornwall campus where I was lacrosse Captain, President and Co-Founder of the Women and Business society and had a part-time job at the local club.

It was a pretty big shock when the doctor dropped the C bomb because I thought that the lump on my chest was just an inflammation from some sort of lacrosse injury and that everyone was overreacting and needed to calm down. I immediately moved back home and took a pause on my degree in Falmouth. I spent about a week or so crying and eating roughly a thousand chocolate and orange biscuits. I held myself the largest pity party and invited all the worst emotions; anger, fear, anxiety and hatred for all those who were carrying on with life. My poor mother.

However, as always, time made things clearer and with the help of my friends and family everything wasn't as dark as the stigma of cancer was built up to be in my head. Cancer has it's range of vile conditions with shitty statistics and in the grand scheme of things mine is more manageable than others. I understand that there will be people reading this who just want to throttle me but everyone has an individual challenge so I'm here for those who can relate to mine. Whether that be because they also are struggling to watch all of their friends grow up and be independent whilst stuck at home or because they have Hodgkin's Lymphoma too. I'm selling my soul to the world of blogging for three reasons:

To update friends and family on my medical progress (repeating diagnosis seven times got a bit tiring).

To research, test out and share my findings on the effects of exercise and cancer.

To answer the questions that I had when I was first diagnosed and share my experience along the way.

There is also the fact that I have nothing better to do. Well thanks for getting this far and keep watching this space if you want more.

Sophia