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I was aged 57 when I had my first mammogram, which was in December 2010.
I'd noticed a hardness in the right side of my right breast for several months but I'd ignored it and it was only when this hardness in the right side of my breast started to become quite painful.
That I actually noticed that my whole right breast was distorted. I could actually see this swelling at the right side and thought "I cant leave this any longer."
So they did the biopsy, waited to get that back, came back “yes it was definitely cancer”. Called in a breast care nurse before she went into any further details, so I thought "oh I think this is quite serious."
They said “yes you will need to lose your breast, you need to have a mastectomy”.
I’d already booked a cruise around New Zealand for two weeks with a girlfriend in January, they said “no you can’t go” and that’s when I realised “yes I’ve got a fight on my hands here”.
The 30th December 2010, I started treatment so I thought maybe I’ve left my run too late with something that size, you hear of women just finding or feeling a little pea sized lump and they have to go through a lot of treatment
and I thought with something that’s five centimetres, I thought “I’m in trouble” and when I spoke to my oncologist I just said to him “is it treatable?” and he said “yes it is”.
So I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief but I’d never up until that point had a mammogram and I don’t.. looking back I don’t know why.
I always thought like lots of things, you know “it’s not going to happen to me”. You hear so much and you read so much about families where there is a history and I just thought “no there’s bowel cancer in my family why would I get breast cancer?”
But of course it can happen and it did happen to me with no family history and one of the things I really wanted to maintain was my independence and having a say in what happened to me.
I didn’t have any choice in the fact that I would lose my breast. I didn’t have any choice in knowing that I had to go through chemotherapy and radiation therapy
but what I did have a choice in was choosing the people that I felt I could… I had confidence in and I felt I could talk to.
I’m just such a great believer in, you know you’ve got these amazing services out there, BreastScreen is one of them
that can detect things early so that what follows after that may not be as dramatic as what myself and other people who do discover things that are advanced, need to go through.
It’s also, this disease just doesn’t affect you the person going through the treatment, it effects those people who love you the most
and I’d never want to see the effect that it had on my family again. So to women everywhere just don’t hesitate, don’t wait, don’t put it off because you can survive the treatment but your family are left feeling so helpless.