I have beaten cancer twice - now I want to share my tale

Sarah-Jane was lying in her hospital bed, heavy from anaesthetic, when she had this most vivid of visions. She had just undergone a 26-hour operation.

"I know, it's pretty out there," the mother-of-two continues. "But they were friendly, they were my allies.

"When I was typing up my story and I got to that part, I shivered. When I read it aloud, I knew it, I knew that was the title of the book."

Worms on Parachutes is Sarah-Jane's life story. And what a story it is.

After surviving a life-threatening bicycle crash as a youngster in Zimbabwe, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at 16 and then breast cancer at 36. Ironically, doctors believe it was the after-effects of her radiation treatment as a teenager that caused the breast cancer two decades later.

"I've spent my entire life in hospital waiting rooms," she says. "But you've just got to stay positive and focused."

That approach has stood her in good stead. Since then, she has gone on to become an author, run the London Marathon and raise tens of thousands of pounds for charity.

Born at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital, Sarah-Jane lived in Penn before moving to Newport, Shropshire, with mum Janette, dad Terence and brother Richard. But, aged three, the family upped sticks to Zimbabwe due to her father's job as a journalist.

"I was quite a tomboy as a child and was accident-prone as a result, I was always falling off horses or spraining my ankle.

"However, when I was 11 I had a serious bike crash. I was going down a steep hill and ended up going straight over my handlebars. I was unconscious for days – they had to put me in an induced coma.

"Luckily, I fully recovered and when I was 12, we moved back to Newport and I enrolled at Burton Borough School. Obviously it was a massive change going from Africa to Shropshire but when you're young, you just get on with things don't you?"

However, at the age of 16, Sarah-Jane started to feel unwell. She regularly had coughs and colds, she was lethargic, her skin itchy and she suffered terrible headaches.

"The first few times I went to the doctor, they reassured me it was nothing to worry about and probably flu. But, as time went on, it was clear something was wrong. Then came the diagnosis of Hodgkin's Disease and then things moved very quickly indeed.

"My parents were devastated but I think they sheltered me from a lot of it. It was upsetting for me but, as a 16-year-old schoolgirl, I don't think I fully understood the implications of the disease.

"I entered straight into rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. The chemo made me very sick because back then they didn't have the anti-sickness tablets that they do now and I was violently ill. I don't like being sick and it was very distressing.

"In the days that followed each treatment, I was extremely tired. But my parents were there throughout it all and tried to make sure things carried on as normal. This all happened at the same time as my GCSEs and I kept up with all my school work and passed my exams. I think I threw myself into the work subconsciously to keep me focused. I think having a focus in a situation like this is very important. It keeps you from dwelling on things.

"But I made good progress. The thing with chemo is you can actually watch the tumours getting smaller through scans and X-rays so that was great to see. The doctors were pleased with me and life started to get back to normal. I still had annual check-up appointments for 16 years afterwards but things were going well."

By now the family had moved again and, after triumphing over Hodgkin's, Sarah-Jane enrolled on a travel and tourism course at a college in Aylesbury. And, following a blind date set up by friends, she married husband Giles on June 5, 1999. The couple went on to have two daughters, Olivia, now 13, and Annabel, 11.

However, life was about to change yet again for the business travel consultant.

"It's quite uncommon with breast cancer but I started to feel unwell beforehand," says the 42-year-old. "I was getting fevers again and terrible headaches. I felt the same as I did when I had Hodgkin's. I was definitely alert to the fact that something was going on, something wasn't quite right.

"People know their own bodies, they know the signs when something is amiss and I think that's very important. People should be in tune with their bodies.

"And then, one Friday night when I was lying in the bath, I felt a lump in my left breast. Because it was a Friday, I couldn't do anything until the Monday morning but I remember feeling that, because I had had Hodgkin's, nothing that bad would happen again.

"I went to see the doctor first thing on Monday and was referred to the hospital. I was still feeling positive though, I was quite relaxed by the whole thing and I just went along to the hospital by myself.

"I had a mammogram, saw the consultant and had a biopsy and then I got the news: I had breast cancer.

"Once again, things happened very very quickly. When you're told something like that, your body goes into shock. It felt different this time though because now I had a husband and two young children – my first thought was about them.

"It's definitely a state of shock. You fear for your life, you fear for your children and I couldn't believe it was happening again."

Again, gruelling sessions of chemo followed and Sarah-Jane also had a mastectomy with immediate reconstructive surgery.

"We didn't really tell the children," she explains from her home in Silsoe, Bedfordshire. "They were only seven and five at the time. All we said was 'Mommy has something in her booby that shouldn't be there and she's going to have some medicine to make it all better'. They know everything now though and they are really supportive.

"It was a scary time. We all stayed positive, I had a great family, a great husband and they never let it get me down but there were periods of time when I was by myself that were the worst of my life. Your imagination gets the better of you and you consider every possible outcome. When I woke up from that first mastectomy, I was so scared as I'm petrified of anaesthetic but I was so grateful to wake up."

Sarah-Jane went on to have a second mastectomy and reconstructive surgery and then a third round of reconstruction, which lasted for 26 hours straight.

"It was when I was coming around from that operation that I had the worms on parachutes hallucination. I'd also made the choice to get super fit and healthy and to get into exercise – again that was another thing for me to focus on instead of the cancer."

Her exercise regime worked wonders and, three years on from her breast cancer diagnosis, Sarah-Jane completed the London Marathon, raising £10,500 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

"I had never been a runner before and it felt completely fantastic to achieve such a thing and raise so much money.

"Then I decided to write a book because I wanted to pay tribute to all the wonderful doctors and nurses in the NHS who looked after me and by now I had such a great story to share. I have nothing but positive things to say about my treatment and I wanted to share that with people. I have the NHS to thank for the way I feel, the way I look, my outlook on life now. I suppose writing is in the family because of my dad but I've never written before. But I just got stuck in and it was actually a really important part of my recovery. The reviews I've had since have been really positive and we've now sold copies of the book on every single continent. Through Facebook, I am getting feedback from all over the world. In fact, a group of women in Perth, Australia, are going to do a sponsored parachute jump dressed up as worms and donate the money to a cancer charity.

"I actually found out the deeper meaning behind that hallucination and it's incredible – but you'll have to read the book to find out more, I don't want to give too much away."

During her time at Burton Borough School, Sarah-Jane was friends with a young lad called Richard Amos, who went on to become a radiation expert working at the University of Texas's MD Anderson Cancer Centre. The pair have remained friends throughout and Richard wrote the foreword to Sarah-Jane's book. He says: "I first met Sarah in the mid 1980s when we were teenagers. Her family had returned to England after years of living overseas and temporarily settled near my hometown in Shropshire. Sarah was instantly popular at school. She was attractive, funny, friendly, intelligent, and seemed to have an experience of the world that transcended our small town. Her love for life was infectious, and she portrayed herself with a confidence I had rarely seen at that point in my life.

"It was already clear in those days that Sarah was a very special person. It was clear that Sarah would rise to meet any challenge, seemingly with ease, and would have a positive effect on everyone she interacted with.

"I see cancer patients every day of my professional life. I see fear, trepidation, courage, strength, humour. I see compassion and understanding shared between patients, and I see unwavering support from patients' loved ones. Sarah's story allowed me to see these from a very different vantage point. Her story is also tribute to the commitment of her surgeon and to the NHS which is arguably the best healthcare system in the world."

Sarah-Jane agrees with that last sentiment entirely.

"This book is for all the workers in the NHS," she concludes. "Sometimes they get a bad press but they perform miracles everyday.

They gave me my life back. They rebuilt me. They will always have a special place in my heart."

* Worms On Parachutes: Mystical Allies In My Cancer Survival by Sarah-Jane Phillips is available on Amazon.

By Elizabeth Joyce