Vicky Ferries was eating pizza when the phone rang.
It was 10.49pm – a detail she’ll never forget. “You’ve got leukaemia,” the voice on the line told her.
It was just three days before her 25th birthday, and Vicky’s world shifted overnight.
Now, nine months into treatment and with just two spinal taps to go, the 26-year-old from Lumphanan is slowly reclaiming her strength – on the family farm, with her twin sister Emma at her side and with Elijah, her pet cow, standing solid as ever.
“I just sit on his back sometimes,” she laughs. “He makes me happy.”
A shock at 24: how cancer crept up on Vicky
Vicky was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, a form of blood cancer, in July 2023 after months of fatigue, bruising and loss of appetite.
Despite the symptoms, she had kept working on the family farm and in a local care home, squeezing in gym sessions in between.
“I was falling asleep in stupid places,” she says. “Everyone kept telling me to call the doctor.”
She finally did, just before a planned birthday trip to Newcastle with Emma and her boyfriend. Blood tests were arranged and the following night, the call came.
“At first I didn’t know what it was,” she says. “They told me to come in the next day. When they confirmed it, I just said, ‘Can I still go to Newcastle?’ They said I wouldn’t make it back.”
Doctors told her that with 99.9% of her blood overtaken by cancer cells, she likely wouldn’t have survived another week without immediate treatment.
“It was a huge shock,” she says. “You don’t think something like this will happen to you at 24.”
A needle in the spine and its lasting legacy
She began chemotherapy right away, undergoing daily treatments and a series of spinal taps to deliver chemo directly into her spine.
A spinal tap, or lumbar puncture, involves inserting a needle into the lower back to draw out spinal fluid and deliver chemotherapy directly to the spine.
For Vicky, the procedure has been as agonising as it sounds.
“I hate them,” she says.
“They have to numb you first, then you curl into a ball so they can get the needle in. If they hit the wrong spot, it sends electric shocks down your legs.”
The pain has left her with nerve damage — and each time one looms, the dread returns. “I get so stressed before it,” she says.
Vicky responds to treatment, but shrinks from the world
It wasn’t all bad news. After just three and a half weeks, Vicky’s cancer was in remission.
But the treatment continues.
Every day she takes chemo tablets, and every 12 weeks she returns for another spinal tap.
The end date is logged into her phone: 11 October 2025. She checks the countdown regularly.
“It was nearly 300 days when I started. Now it’s down to 200-something,” she says. “I’m going to have a big party.”
Despite the early remission, recovery hasn’t been easy. Returning to her family farm should have been a relief.
Instead, it brought new frustrations.
“In hospital I felt more positive. I had people around me. When I came home, it was just me in my room,” she says. “I couldn’t work, I couldn’t go near the animals. I couldn’t do anything.”
She struggled to see a way forward. Her strength vanished. She couldn’t climb into the tractor or over a gate.
She stayed indoors, sometimes unable to walk at all due to fluid in her hips.
“It felt like I was in darkness,” she says. “I didn’t know if life would ever be normal again.”
The twin sister that didn’t leave her side
She withdrew, even from Emma and her cousin Jodie Strachan. Before Vicky’s cancer, they were an unbreakable group that had bracingly christened themselves the ‘Fiesta Bitches’. But for the first time Vicky felt adrift.
“They have their own lives, their jobs, kids,” Vicky says. “I didn’t want to bother them. But it was lonely.”
Vicky and Emma are not identical — “I’ve got the darker hair,” Vicky laughs — but the connection between them runs deep.
“She was always there, even if she didn’t understand everything I was going through. Sometimes she’d just sit on the phone with me in silence. And that was enough.”
She adds: “We’re exactly the same in so many ways. But I’m the one that got cancer.”
Why Vicky’s pet cow Elijah means the world to her
Despite Vicky’s fears she was closing herself off, Emma and Jodie played an instrumental role in her recovery.
They came to visit her in hospital. They FaceTimed constantly.
Sometimes they broke the rules, sneaking out of the hospital to drive to the beach. “It made me feel normal,” Vicky says. “One time I even got discharged and didn’t tell the hospital I was already home.”
And then there’s Elijah – the pet cow Vicky stepped in to raise after he was born on the farm with a deformed leg.
Early on, infection risk meant she couldn’t visit him. But as she recovered, he became her companion again.
“I practice my Courage on the Catwalk walk in front of him,” she grins. “He just stands there like, ‘Mum, what are you doing?’”
Elijah has been part of her therapy. “He makes me feel calm,” she says. “Sometimes I just sit on his back. He’s my boy.”
Vicky Ferries, Courage star
Courage on the Catwalk, the annual fashion show fundraiser in Aberdeen run by cancer charity Friends of Anchor, has given her something else too: confidence.
When she arrived at the first session, she didn’t know what to expect. She describes herself as shy.
But meeting 24 other women with similar experiences changed everything. “It was a relief,” she says. “I could talk and people actually understood what I meant.”
Now, she’s practising her walk, picking music and getting ready for the spotlight.
“I never would have done anything like this before,” she says. “But cancer changed me. I used to be quiet. Now, I don’t care what people think. I say what’s on my mind.”
She’s even thinking about adding something new to her routine.
Although she’s returned to her part-time care home job, she’s been eyeing up a different kind of challenge.
“There’s a job going at a local bakery I’ve had my eye on,” she says. “I just want to try something new alongside the farm.” Whatever happens, she says, the animals will always come first.
Vicky sets sights on Courage bow
Looking ahead, she knows the cancer could return within five years.
But she tries not to dwell on it. “They did a test and said it probably won’t come back. But I’m prepared,” she says. “If I feel the symptoms again, I won’t wait this time.”
For now, she’s focused on the countdown. In May, Courage on the Catwalk will be a celebration of her recovery so far. And Elijah will be watching from the sidelines – unless she brings him onstage.
“He’d be very good,” she laughs, thrilled at the idea. “He’d just stand there.”
Vicky is raising money for Friends of Anchor. Click here to donate.
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