Hello, dear reader! 😀
My name is Ronja Pöyhönen and I am a 22-year-old medical student from southern Finland studying in third year in university in Riga, Latvia.
This year has been far the most difficult one for me and my whole entire family. This spring 2024 I got first diagnosed with reactive psychosis in my city hospital in Turku, Finland. I got prescribed medication and ended up consuming antipsychotics and sedatives for five months with no response in positive. In Finland it is a custom and a part of the medical protocol to order MRI scans for everyone who gets a psychosis diagnosis. Due to my young age as well as my demanding medical studies a mental illness diagnosis was the most rational. Unfortunately, in the MRI as the radiative nurses injected me with a contrast agent and after some days it turned out that I never has any mental illness - it turned out to be a brain tumour, a cancerous malignant second grade oligodendroglioma in my right frontal cortex, the size of a lemon (5,5 cm in diameter). Three weeks after my cancer diagnosis I was operated on in the very same public hospital which first gave me the misdiagnosis. The brain surgery was successful and there were luckily no complications.
I was misdiagnosed on April 21st 2024, got my MRI's done on July 27th, got cancer diagnosis on 1st of August and was operated on 22nd of August. Due to my energetic and unconscious and unaware behaviour due to the surgery as the tumour was on my frontal cortex I was then ordered to go to the emergency room for psychiatric disorders. Again. Everything started at the psych department and after a successful brain operation I was there again. Little did the doctors here in our welfare country Finland know that the manic symptoms I was experiencing were due to the brain operation. The psychiatrists wanted to send me to the mental, psych ward and diagnose me with bipolar syndrome. I wanted to just go home to my family. I was then again prescribed antipsychotics and sedatives - the same ones which made me feel like dying as I ate them earlier in the spring as well and felt like dying, depression and suicide.
I was on sick leave until 24.11.2024 and on 25.11.2024 I started working as an intern here at one hospital in Finland. I was sent to work in the memory illness department with patients with actual depressive psychosis diagnoses as well as dementia, alzheimers, parkinson disease etc. I will also be working in the neurology department as an intern and later in the orthopedic surgery department in January 2025. In the beginning of the year 2024 I also had a knee surgery done inn the private sector in Finland, a medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction, so all of my internship placements actually are hitting home very much.
I am currently on academic absence from my university until February 2025 - at least I hope so. I have my control MRI's again in the beginning of next February and only time will tell what happens after. I don't like the scannings at all. Brain cancer is not common in young adults. I feel like I'm the only brain cancer patient in Finland - the population here is just 5,5 million,, so I might as well be the only oligodendroglioma patient at the moment, since I read and understood that there are only 1/100 000 of the cases.
Bravery, Such inspirational stories are to be told. I need someone who can relate to me, someone who understands when I describe my feelings. I was in touch with Kathy from England about AYA, Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer. She kindly told me that she will guide me forward with my journey on connecting with people like me and get more facts and data and understanding of the events regarding this matter organised all over the world. I want to take part in conferences, talk on TED Talk, become a journalist, start a podcast and give this matter a face and brand it. I want to speak up and feel seen, heard, respected and understood. Validation. That is what I seek.
I got operated just three months ago and I know many cancer patients and people in recovery who don´t want to know anything about their diseases due to trauma or other factors. I want to know everything and take part in research and help save and support others like me. I do not want to hear about stories of someone my age having to have to eat wrong medication that chemically alters their brains. That is disgusting and that makes me sick to my core.
I hope we could be in touch about this matter and regarding some remote as well as in-person opportunities that you would have to offer. I am longing for my peers who have also been through something similar like I have. I would like to go and grab a beer or go and watch some movie or a concert with someone likemindedand brave and curious and someone who has also survived death and someone who is vulnerable but still remains kind and free-spirited despite all the wrongs and hardship life has thrown at them.
I hope to hear from You soon and thank you kindly in advance or your guidance and help with this very important cause!
Thank you, and peace be with You! ☮️✌️✨
Kindly and with warm regards,
Ronja Elina Olivia
