Ten years cancer free!

I didn't want to go for several reasons: I thought I would be embarrassed, I was invited to have a mammogram as I was in my 50th year, but as it was six months before my 50th birthday, I didn't think I was old enough to have one, and I had not found any lumps so didn't think I needed one.

My first thought was to put the letter in the bin and forget about it, I thought I'd just be wasting everyone's time if I had a mammogram. Basically I just didn't want to go.

Boy was I wrong!

When my hubby fished the letter out of the bin and told me off for throwing it away, I still didn't want to go, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I was going.

The mammogram was to be in a mobile unit on the car park of a local clinic, just five minutes drive from home. I wouldn't even have to go to the hospital, a place I dislike intensely.

The hardest thing about having a mammogram was having to take off my clothes. I can't say it hurt, though you are squeezed pretty tightly, but it's more uncomfortable than painful.

The whole thing took no more than 10, maybe 15 minutes at a push, no great chunk out of your life when it can save it.

Three days after that mammogram I got a letter asking me to go to the hospital breast care unit, the letter arrived on the Saturday, the appointment was for Tuesday, they certainly work fast.

I shook and cried when I got that letter. I rang Graham, my hubby, at work to tell him and could hardly talk for crying. He tried to reassure me that it would be ok but I knew, in my heart I knew.

I had a biopsy under a scan at hospital, the area was numbed with a local anaesthetic beforehand and I didn't feel anything.

The radiographer showed me the tumour they had found on the screen, it was buried deep and was small, he said it had been caught early. He told me straight when I asked for an honest answer he thought it was cancer, the calcification he told me, gave it away. He couldn't say for definate until the lab results the next day.

We returned home in a daze, I had to tell Graham in the waiting room after my biopsy that they thought it was cancer. I felt terrible. It's truly horrible having to tell your husband of almost 30 years bad news like that. We were dreading telling our children, my mum, and the rest of our family and friends. We decided to keep the news to ourselves until we knew for sure, there was no point in upsetting everyone if it turned out to be good news after all.

February 8, 2005, was the day I was told I had breast cancer. Even though I knew in my heart of hearts that it would be the case, it was still a shock. I tried to pretend it wasn't happening, jokingly asking if they could give me a tummy tuck, using fat from my stomach to rebuild my breast. I used humour to hide my feelings, it didn't seem real.

The specialist breast care nurse who was in the room with us when the doctor told us the news obviously realised it hadn't sunk in. She followed me and Graham down the corridor and whipped us into a small room for some privacy when the tears came.

I was booked in with the surgeon, he explained what would happen, a wide local excision and the removal of lymph glands. The surgeon thought it was stage one (stage one usually means the cancer is relatively small and confined to the organ it has been found in), grade one and I would just need radiotherapy for three weeks. I breathed a sigh of relief, no chemotherapy.

Wrong again.

The operation took a bit longer than expected, apparently when they opened me up it was obvious the cancer was a correct diagnosis. The surgeon removed enough tissue to ensure he did not leave any cells behind. He removed 13 lymph glands and I woke from the operation with a bottle attached to a tube going into my body draining off the lymph fluid. The bottle was held in place in a small cotton bag which I had to carry around over my shoulder. Very becoming! The bottle was in place for five days until enough fluid had drained off, then they pulled it gently out before I went home.

I was so glad to get home after five days in hospital. I had exercises to do to regain full use of my arm, and had an appointment with the surgeon a week later to get the lab results.

The lab results were such a shock. It was grade three, stage three - an aggressive, fast growing cancer. The cancer had spread to three of the lymph glands that had been removed. I would have to have chemotherapy. I would loose my long, thick, brown hair.

Chemotherapy. Even the word scared me. You hear of it making people terribly ill. Who knew what would happen? I was scared. Very scared.

Would the chemotherapy be by injection, tablets, a drip? I really had no idea. Fear of the unknown can sometimes be more frightening than reality.

Everyone at the Deansley Centre at New Cross Hospital was lovely.

The room in which you have chemotherapy was not so bad; there were armchairs which reclined to keep you comfortable, a radio playing softly to combat the silence, and the nurses were all lovely- so kind and caring.

The first session of chemotherapy involved having an intravenous fluid drip inserted into my hand, through which a kindly nurse pushed the contents of a large syringe filled with a cocktail of drugs, while chatting away to take my mind off it.

You can take someone into the treatment room to sit with you, and you can also send them off for sweets, sandwiches, and magazines!

I had chemotherapy four times at three week intervals.

When I used the toilet afterwards my wee was bright red which, had I not been warned about, might have alarmed me!

After the first session my hair fell out. It got thinner and thinner, and I would find it on my pillow, all over the carpet, until the day before my second session when the majority went down the plug hole in the shower! Quite a shock! Luckily the lady who supplied wigs to cancer patients had given me her address, so I went to see her to have what was left of my hair shaved off and get a wig. I also had a selection of pretty scarves to wear, which I did opt for a lot of the time as the wig could feel a bit itchy.

After four sessions of chemotherapy, I had three weeks of radiotherapy which made me very tired and caused some burns to my skin. I then started a different course of chemotherapy which I had for two weeks on, then two weeks off. I had to take an antidote after 24 hours to stop it working after each session.

Yes I was sick. I was given anti-sickness medication which was doubled after the first session, and it helped a lot.

The treatment made me very tired, disoriented, and I passed out a couple of times, but I got through it.

I was looking forward to the end of October when all my treatments would be over. But then a terrible thing happened: my lovely mum died suddenly. It was so unexpected, so shocking, so hard to cope. My mum, my rock, my lovely mum, gone. She was 84, not a young woman I know, but we had not foreseen it, we were all numb with grief.

Only two years previously we had lost dad after a long illness. My mum was devoted to him, they were devoted to one another. I'm sure she died of a broken heart. The shock and grief of loosing dad, and the worry over my cancer must have been unbearable for her. I felt guilt for worrying her so much, and I was, for a time, convinced she would take me with her.

The surgeon had said my cancer was fast growing and aggressive. He also said he had ladies alive ten years after a diagnosis like mine! I cried when he said that. Ten years would take me up to the age of 59.

All thoughts of celebrating the end of chemotherapy went out of the window. I couldn't bear the thought, not without mum being there to see the end of the ordeal.

The end of October came and went, and then I had a letter to tell me my tumour had been retested and proved to be HER2+. My heart sank, the fight for herceptin (the drug to treat it) was all over the media; women were fighting to get the drug approved to save lives. I prepared to join the fight.

I applied to my local Primary Care Trust (PCT) for the drug to be used, and I kept a lookout for news that all those who needed it would be allowed to have it.

On the morning I had a phone call from the PCT to say I had gained approval for herceptin, the news was on the radio that it would be available for all, it had been approved!

So started another year of hospital visits where I received herceptin through an IV drip, and once again I was at the hospital every two weeks. After seven months of looking forward to finishing my treatment, I was back for another twelve months of needles and blood tests!

Just before Christmas 2006, I finished having treatment in hospital, and I began to start taking hormone tablets at home.

Last year I finally stopped having to take hormones and I was signed off by the oncologist. I was slightly scared by by the fact that the comfort blanket of knowing you are being looked after was gone, but thankful not to have regular hospital appointments to attend.

This year the surgeon should sign me off his books too, or so I was told on my annual visit last year. Normally a breast cancer patient attends hospital for five years, I was told I would need to keep going for ten years as the cancer was so aggressive and fast growing.

Well that ten years is up, I'm still around, I'm cancer free, it's 2015 and I am alive!