Not really sure where to start...I guess the best thing might be to say that I was diagnosed with melanoma late last year - the biopsy of the mole had removed all of the melanoma, but I had to have a further operation in January to make sure it hadn't spread into the surrounding skin. The operation was on my right arm and left me unable to write for a couple of weeks - I'd suspected I might have difficulties writing for a few days, but I hadn't expected the severe pain that meant I had to take a week off, and then the infection that meant I was in a sling for a further week after returning to university.

I've been back at university for a month now and am able to write and type as normal (the only thing I can't do is lift heavy objects with my right arm), but the one major course I have this year I'm struggling to keep up with. It's a design course (I'm doing a design engineering degree), and although I'd thought my tutor had initially been sympathetic to the fact that I'd taken time off, he doesn't now seem to be making any allowances for the fact that I've had two weeks less time to work than everyone else - he seems to be expecting me to "design my way out" of any problems I'm having. He emailed me a few weeks ago explicitly stating that it is my responsibility to catch up on any work I've missed.

We have a presentation in two weeks where we're expected to have a "defined design", but I'm nowhere near - the infuriating thing is that this is partly my fault for not testing a critical aspect of my design until recently, so I can't blame the recent design change I've had to make, that's set me back weeks, on the melanoma. But I think I can partly blame the melanoma on the fact that I'm finding it very difficult to get motivated and work at the level I should be working to catch up - I've been feeling this way since diagnosis, it's not there all the time but it's certainly that way at the moment. It also doesn't help that I was recently rejected for a job in the one industry that I've always wanted to work in, but when I was at the assessment centre for it and finding out more about the job I came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't have been right for me after all...so I'm questioning the point of putting myself through the massive effort of finishing my degree when I can't see myself getting a job I enjoy afterwards.

Given that it's only two weeks until the presentation for the course I have a feeling it may be too late to talk to my adviser of studies - he's at a different institution to where my design course is, so getting the message back to the design school that I'm finding it hard to cope would probably take too long. I don't know if I can talk to my tutor because he seems to be of the attitude that if I can't do something it's because I'm "being too negative" and not working hard enough...and even if he did agree that I'm too far behind I won't be able to take the presentation at a later date because that would mean having to move the date for everyone.

So, I have no idea what to do beyond trying to get my act together and work properly, and hope that because I've made a note on my record of the melanoma (although not the lack of motivation that followed) that the exam board will take this into account when my coursework is marked... I sat an exam a week after getting diagnosed and managed to get the (not very good) result removed from my record quite quickly, but that course was only for 10 credits (the whole year is 120) and the design course is 60 so I couldn't do that in this case. One of my friends is trying to defer the year because she's struggling with stress, but the design institution doesn't want her to and instead has told her to take some time off...which is fine while she's off but will just make things worse when she comes back and has the same workload but less time, so I don't really see their logic there. So that's one reason not to defer, plus the fact that if I did I'd feel like a complete and utter failure, even more so than I do already.

Any advice/support would be appreciated, sorry it's so long...