"My name's Libby. I am 20 years old and I was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkins Lymphoma in April of 2022. I'm in full remission now, so I'm doing really well. But obviously, being told at 18 years old that you have cancer is a feeling that I don't think I'll ever be able to put into words. I was in my first year of university when I got diagnosed and I was studying musical theatre, so I was singing and dancing all day, every day, the change from that to then receiving chemotherapy once every two weeks was just my whole life was flipped upside down.
The support that I received from everyone in my life, but specifically from Clatterbridge, was incredible. It's such a beautiful hospital. They just made me feel so at ease and so weirdly, really calm about everything that I was going through. The nurses were just angels. They became like family. There was always someone there to talk to. They always did trips for us and stuff, like, we went to Zoo together and we did an escape room, we went for meals. And I am in a specific teenage and young adult unit, so everyone that was getting treatment was roughly my age, which helped so much. Like, even if you didn't really speak to them, you just kind of knew that everyone understood what each other were going through.
Clatterbridge is such a special charity, such a special hospital, and with your help, you can fund life saving research, you can help invest into technology. There's so many things that the Clatterbridge charity does. Currently, they are focusing on an arts programme, so I actually remember getting treatment and I got to do a little zoom with someone from the Philharmonic because they have a partnership with Clatterbridge. And I got my little Xylophone out that was in the communal area and I had, like, a one to one music session and it distracted me from the chemotherapy. And before I knew it, like an hour had went by and I was like, oh, my God, it was so fun. The Philharmonic are in partnership and they provide live music for the communal areas. They have a wandering musician who, I think when I saw her, she had a saxophone and she took requests of people to play songs. And there's so many things that they do. And there's also a poetry machine which staff and patients can get a personalised poem about their journey and what they've been through. The arts programme also do an activity pack for people who can't leave their bed during treatment and a music corner with loads of instruments in.
It's an incredible thing that they're doing, and obviously, with your support, they can get more funding for that and make everything that little bit easier."
