Warrior Princess Undefeated

By Jacqueline Ridout

First time author Jacqueline Ridout shares her inspirational story with the world to provide hope for people with cancer, and to shed light on what cancer patients endure. Jacqueline's moving memoir  follows her journey through her illness, sharing very personal details about what happened to her.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacqueline Ridout
• Release date: Apr 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781802272819

Book preview

Prologue

Books of all kinds can take us through other’s experiences, on an adventure or to a different place or time. We can relate to some stories and by reading them it helps us to understand and learn through someone else’s eyes. Stories, whether fact or fiction, old or new, can be told and re-told differently over time to new generations.

It may have all been said before but, I want to share the knowledge I have learned, which saved my life, and the fact that research and medicine will continually evolve and improve for others in the future.

I have always been a storyteller with photographs and now I am telling my story with words to share my individual experience. I want this book to be a therapeutic and enlightening read for people and to give the reader an insight from a very personal perspective of what happened to me; because behind every person there is a story to tell and this is my story, my personal journey and this is the most crucial point in my life.

Cancer, once diagnosed, never leaves you. Cancer brings clouds into a person’s blue skies. Luckily for me, my cloud had a silver lining, and I was determined to get the sunshine back.

Since the beginning of my ordeal, I have kept a journal of my experience to give me an outlet, and to help me focus throughout. In writing this journal, it helped me to understand more about people who live with cancer and the hurdles they and their loved ones’ face. I began to record everything that was going on in my journal and as time went on and my journal became bigger, I decided to keep going with it and write it as a book to share my story.

I feel that such information is not always something that is very forthcoming from cancer patients or doctors, and this is possibly because people with cancer are not always willing to share very personal experiences with the world.

As I will keep stressing throughout this book, we are not all the same and every individual’s experience will be quite different. Therefore, what a doctor can see going on with one patient will not be the same for the next. They can only advise on what to expect during treatment, or what could happen.

I have written this book in the hope it will help others going through cancer, or those watching someone going through cancer or similar circumstances. My story, although harrowing for me, is one from a positive perspective and how I chose to live and not let go of hope.

Cancer is something I will live with for the rest of my life. It started in 2016 and lasted over a three-year period, from the point of diagnosis to making it to my fiftieth birthday – something at the time of being diagnosed that I never thought possible.

Along the way there have been some fascinating people who have loved me, comforted me, inspired me, and helped me to fight this all the way. These people who have been on this ride with me do not realise how brave they have been through all this and how special each of them are to me.

My immediate family, my parents and brother, are my world. They mean everything to me, and I love them more than life itself. They keep my spirits high and my heart beating stronger than ever. Amongst all this heartache and the tears, they have also kept the laughter on tap, which has been a good shock absorber to the blows in our lives.

I don’t have a husband or kids, so I guess for me, this was one stress I didn’t have to cope with.

I could not have done this without the support of my entire family (and a large one at that). It hit them much harder than I ever imagined but they all stood by me throughout. We are a close family and having to tell them once I was diagnosed, was one of the toughest things I had to do; much tougher than hearing that I had cancer.

My friends and work colleagues are my rocks and it amazed me the amount of people who reached out to me and were there for me at a time when I needed them most. I am truly fortunate in life to have the most amazing people in it.

The hospital staff in Southampton, without whom I would probably not be sitting here writing this book now - I do not know how they do their job helping people like me day in, day out. I see how dedicated they are to their patients and their jobs, and these people have done outstanding things in their encouragement, my treatment plan, and my ongoing care.

Then there are those in the public eye who I have admired from afar. People whose work I love such as musicians, actors, photographers, TV and sports personalities. Some tell their stories on TV or via a magazine article to highlight their cancer experiences and there are those who are more private, but who you may hear of in the media. I am also inspired by those who may not have experienced or shared their personal journeys in the media but whose movies and music carried me through a very dark time.

You see, there are many people from all walks of life that have given me understanding, strength, knowledge, and encouragement to keep going, keep smiling and keep living.

Hearing someone else’s story can play such a big part in helping you to understand and overcome things like an illness and make you see that you are never alone.

I feel very blessed to have such amazing people in my life and I thank you all for giving me the strength to fight, the willpower to live and the empowerment to use what I can to spread the word and support and share the love to others. I want to give others hope and the determination to want to keep going, as you have all done for me.

With love from your Wonder Woman, your Warrior Princess, and sometimes your little pain in the rear end!

xx

* * *

Chapter One

Family

It’s cancer.

No one ever expects to hear this kind of news in their lifetime however, I did, and this is my story.

My name is Jacqueline. I was born and still live in Southampton in Hampshire, and I am living with cancer.

Cancer is something I feel people should never feel scared to talk about. It is a subject some people tend to shy away from. I do not, and I welcome anyone who broaches the subject with me.

Hopefully, this book will inspire someone else going through this and will help them to live with cancer and get through it as positively as possible.

I am an optimist and drawing on the support of my loved ones to get me through this has helped me a great deal.

Twice since 2016 I had cancer and I was given chemotherapy at hospital to combat it. Unfortunately for me, it is not curable but with ongoing maintenance treatment the medical team can help control it.

My first encounter with cancer in my body was back in January of 2002 when I was diagnosed with cancerous cells in my cervix and admitted to hospital for laser surgery to have the cells burned away.

This is now a much more commonly known thing for women to have done and is more widely spoken about. Since this small operation, I have been a very fit and healthy person and my cervical smear results have all been clear.

The good side of having a cervical screening is that if done regularly and not avoided then if cancer is present, it can be caught at an early stage and dealt with. It is so important for our health to ensure we get these regular checks done.

With ovarian cancer, it is very unfortunate that it is not so easy to detect there is not a specific test for it. It is not something that can be picked up in routine screening like a cervical smear test and therefore it can grow without us ever knowing. Ovarian cancer can grow at an aggressive rate before it is detected or becomes noticeable within the body that there is something wrong. I was not going to take this news lying down and I intended to be around for a long time to come. Well, I had this book to finish for starters and then there is my 50th birthday to celebrate and I am certainly not one to miss out on a good party!

My glass is always half full and as the saying goes, I hope with the many life experiences I have had, that I will go to my grave skidding in sideways with a margarita in hand, a little ruffled round the edges, but with no regrets. I am enjoying life and I am not ready to give up the ghost just yet.

I have never been a wealthy person, yet I consider myself rich in life with the most amazing friends and family who I love unconditionally. We are a large family and over the years we have made many memorable moments together: holidays, party celebrations and family gatherings. We live life to the full and make the most of what we have.

My family have played such an important part in my journey with cancer, so I am going to tell you a little about them.

My dad grew up in Poppy Road, one of the flower roads in Southampton. He was one of five children to Ethel and Walter Ridout and baby brother to his four older sisters, Brenda, Edna, Margaret, and Doris. Dad was always the quieter of the clan and more laid back and being the only boy to four sisters they probably did most of the talking.

Mum’s upbringing was quite different to my dad’s. My grandmother left her husband, Grandad Loader, and their two young children. My grandad needed to continue to work to make a living and had no choice but to have them cared for so he could do this, and so my mum and Uncle Brian were sent on separate paths. Brian went to live with my grandad’s relatives in Dorset, whilst mum, unbeknown to her dad, became a modern-day Cinderella for her aunt and uncle, working all the hours God sends.

Mum lived out this life until a time when she was of school leaving age, when she could afford to leave home and spread her wings in the big wide world. This was the time when she got herself a little flat and began to really start living.

My parents met whilst working for GM Motors, a world-wide company, at a Southampton based factory called AC Delco. Dad started working in the factory in 1956, and thereafter my mum got a job also working on the production lines. They became friends and it was not many years before their friendship blossomed into something more. I think the many pranks my mum played on my dad heavily contributed.

One day my mum trotted off to make a tea round with her friend and whilst walking back through the factory she noticed my dad bent over a machine trying to fix it. Mum could see his jeans stretched away from his backside and as she walked past him, she took the hot tea bags from the cups and threw them down the back of his trousers. They still laugh about it now and the fact that my mum had never seen my dad move so fast off his chair.

Another time dad left his workstation and whilst he was gone my mum got up to her usual mischievous tricks; she walked over to his chair and stuffed sheets of newspapers underneath. She waited for his return, and once he had sat back down, she crept up behind him and set light to the newspaper. It took a few minutes for my dad to feel the warmth to his backside to the extent he realised it was too hot to handle and he again jumped up off his chair swearing and cussing whilst behind he was being laughed at by mum and their work colleagues. They have both retained a good sense of humour and this has certainly helped me over the last three years.

Once my younger brother, Tony, and I came along, my mum gave up her job to look after us and my dad took a new role at the plant as a security officer. Although my brother and I are the spark in our parent’s lives, through time there have been various incidents which occurred that probably gave my parents many a grey hair and wrinkle. Life was never dull in our family.

It didn’t help on the stressful day of their house move from their start up home in an area called Sholing to their new forever home, a twenty-minute ride away. That day they forgot something particularly important … Tony. He was seven years old at the time. My parents hadn’t told him he needed to wait at school so they could pick him up. He came out, realised they were not there and so he walked back to our old house. At the front door he stood, and knocked hard to be let in, to then be greeted by some unfamiliar faces. The new occupiers were quick to contact my parents and told them of the horror on his poor little face at seeing them. A typical Home Alone movie scenario. Another time he was playing, and a desk fell on his leg. It became serious and for weeks after he had to have his leg injected regularly to prevent infection spreading.

Me?… Well, I wasn’t only the attention seeker of the family, but also the accident prone one. Wherever there was trouble you can guarantee I was involved somehow. Like the time I held my breath when I couldn’t get my own way until I keeled over on a pavement in the city centre, hit my head hard on the concrete, and had to be rushed to hospital. And then later when I was nine years old, my neighbour, Paula, and I decided to ride our bikes out of our cul-de-sac and three miles to another estate. Our bike ride took us to a park where a family football match was taking place on the adjacent field. I fell into a sandpit face down hitting my head hard. As I stood up reality hit as I noticed blood dripping from my head and then I saw what looked like pieces of a broken glass in the sandpit. There was a large protruding shard of green coloured glass sticking out of the sand covered in blood – my blood. I had cut my eyelid open. A few centimetres the wrong way and I would have lost my eye for sure.

In a panic Paula grabbed one of the dads watching the football match and before I knew it, he whisked me up in his arms and drove me straight to my parents, who then raced me to the hospital to be stitched up.

One time my dad had to swing by his local social club. Whilst dad was inside the club, Tony and I went over to play on the swings. To this day I am not sure why I did it, but I placed some coins I had into my mouth and as I swung back on the swing, I accidentally swallowed a 5 pence coin. These coins were just over 2cm in diameter back then. Yep, you guessed it … another trip to A&E. The coin showed up clear as day on the X-ray, and the doctor reassured us that nature would take its course and it would leave my body naturally. I never saw that bloody coin again.

We certainly made life interesting for our parents.

Generally, life has been good to us, but it has not always been a bed of roses and for some in our family, life has been very tough. You cannot have the highs without the lows unfortunately and that is all part of life’s little journey. It can be hard enough at the best of times for a lot of people, but it is about how we each choose to deal with our own circumstances and what life throws at us.

Whilst I am still alive and kicking, I choose to live life to the full no matter how long I might have left. Yes, I admit I am scared about having cancer, and I understand it can show itself to me again at any time. No, I do not wish to die; however it is inevitable that we all leave this planet eventually - I just do not believe my time is right now.

I do not go to church, unless attending celebrations such as weddings or christenings but, there are many times that I pray to God to be well and healthy. I pray that this will not affect my family too much and we can all be strong for each other and battle our way through this.

Past illnesses which affected my loved ones resonate a great deal with me. Both sides of my parent’s family have experienced cancer, leukaemia and other life-threatening incidents and we have lost many loved ones along the way. The heartache we carry and the loss in our lives have only made us all much stronger and more resilient. Even with all the ailments my older aunties and uncles suffered, they each continued to live, laugh, and love their way through life. They totally inspired me for different reasons. They would go through the trauma, pain, and loss, yet would get on with it, making more memories with those around them.

I remember in the seventies when I was young; the family getting together often and having the most awesome times. We would all be celebrating on Boxing Day every year at a different family household. Back then there would be about 30 of us, give or take. The children would be put upstairs to bed as the evening grew late, whilst the adults continued partying into the early hours. Eventually the women would go to bed topping and tailing, and the men would retire to the living room with their playing cards, whisky bottle and sleeping bags and they would generally stay up until around 5:00 in the morning.

My brother and I were sometimes woken with the sound of laughter coming from the bedrooms and normally because my mum would be playing practical jokes on my aunties whilst they were each getting ready for bedtime, or she would stuff things under the covers to frighten my aunties when they got into bed. Complete nutters the lot of them, but these were some of the funniest memories.

The whole family would holiday together each year taking a ferry crossing from Southampton over to the Isle of Wight. We would stay at a holiday camp called Nodes Point.

This holiday consisted of dad’s parents, mum’s dad and all the aunties, uncles, and cousins. I remember our terraced chalet accommodation, and we all resided in chalets either next door to each other or a few chalets apart. I remember evenings in the onsite club house where they would hold various themed events for both adults and children. One night my mum, who has never smoked, won the sexiest smoker competition. She took a cigarette, casually walked up to the