Hodgkin lymphoma: Woman given stage four cancer all-clear

A woman who was given the all-clear from stage four cancer has spoken about how she "powered through" her treatment with help from family and friends.

Georgia Bell, from Wickersley, South Yorkshire, was just 21 when she found a lump in her groin and soon afterwards was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.

She was told the cancer had spread to seven parts of her body and endured six months of chemotherapy.

She was told the cancer had gone last January.

"I didn't believe it, it's such a shock and you think, is it real?" she said.

"And then you have the aftermath of, is it going to come back?"

Ms Bell, now 23, is campaigning for Stand Up To Cancer to speed up progress in life-saving cancer research.

She said she was in the bath when she first discovered something was wrong in March 2021.

"When I first found the lump I didn't really panic, I had lumps in places before and there was never anything to worry about," she said.

"Then, as mums do, she said you need to get it checked out, so I eventually did.

"I went for an ultrasound and then a biopsy and then I was given the awful news."

Ms Bell said she checked her notes on the NHS app, and googled everything the doctors had written down.

"I kind of prepared for that [the cancer], but it was the stage four that shocked me the most.

"I had a lot of people there for me, I had a massive support system. I tried to power through but nobody knows how it feels until you go through that."

She said she "tried to be as social and as positive" as she could, but had one good weekend followed by a difficult one.

"The weekend after chemo was my bad weekend, the weekend after that was my good weekend, and we always planned around that," she said.

Ms Bell said when she was first diagnosed she urged her boyfriend Callum to leave her, but they remain together and plan to try for a baby.

Even with his support and her family around her, she said it could be lonely.

"Sometimes you don't want to upset other people, so I'd take it in turns to talk to people so they could also have a support system," she said.

She finished chemotherapy in December last year, and was given the all-clear on 16 January.

"I didn't believe it, it is such a big shock and you think is it real? And then you have the aftermath of, is it going to come back?"

She now wants to highlight the work done by Cancer Research UK.

The charity's spokesperson for Yorkshire, Jane Bullock, said: "Thanks to our supporters, our researchers are working tirelessly to help more people like Georgia survive - from developing a molecule to super-charge the immune system to attack tumours, to re-programming viruses to seek and destroy cancer cells.

"But we must go further and faster. All of us can help beat it. That's why we're asking everyone to Stand Up To Cancer with us."

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