What is my story in short to date? It probably starts very similar to many of your own stories.
For a long time I have felt that my cancer was what was defining me. Not the fact that I’m happily married or own and run a small sign business with my husband or travelled to Europe, but that I had breast cancer.
I was 28 and planning to start a family when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was three days before Christmas when I was putting on a t-shirt and I rubbed the side of my chest by accident. It felt sore, so I stopped and felt a lump. The next day I went to the doctors who sent me for an ultrasound, but I was told not to worry because at my age it was just likely to be only a cyst. Well it wasn’t. I received the news on Christmas Eve. However all the specialists went on holiday over Christmas, and the soonest I could see someone was the first week of January. So I eventually had a biopsy, which was inconclusive but suspected a bad result. The next week I had a lumpectomy, and the result was “yes it was cancer and no they didn’t get a clear margin”. So the following week I chose to have a partial mastectomy and some lymph nodes removed. This was followed by six months of chemotherapy and seven weeks of radiotherapy.
I thought before chemo, “Please I don’t care about being sick but I just don’t want to lose my hair.” Well I soon changed my mind. I was so sick after treatment that I was back in hospital, plus I lost my hair. Although some friends thought my wig was nicer than my hair, and were actually giving me compliments without realising it was a wig.
Sometimes people said to me “You’re young it won’t be so bad”. Well because I was young the cancer was aggressive (high hormones), because I was young I reacted badly to the chemo, but because I was young I also bounced back quicker.
I don’t believe it has made me stronger, but definitely more paranoid. A headache is a “brain tumour”, any ache is a “bump”. But it has made me get on with life. I now have holidays when we want. I don’t work weekends anymore. I live. I will do anything once, but maybe not another time. Like paragliding which was my 30th birthday present from my husband, who I must say I couldn’t have gone through all this without. It may have even been harder for him because he could only just sit next to me and couldn’t do anything to protect me. But he did come to every treatment, every test, every doctors appointment, everything.
I changed my whole lifestyle after finding out I had cancer, to give my body the best opportunities to survive. I eat healthy (juice vegies), got my mind healthy too (positive thinking), plus started to get my fitness up (dragon boating paddling).
Well this is my five year mark and I’m in the small percentage of good and as well as bad. I have been blessed you see because after all the battery I’ve been through, I’m now in another small percentage, which the Oncologist said would be highly unlikely, even the surgeon said to think about survival first. I have a highly unlikely mini me, a six month old baby girl, Madeline. So now my focus is on her and I’m incredibly grateful to have the chance to have this family.
I had resolved myself to not having a family, but that didn’t matter because my husband has two daughters from a previous marriage. So he is not with me for kids, and his girls are wonderful to me. But then in March 2008 I was going for an MRI breast check, which has to be timed with my cycle, but I didn’t have one. So I just thought I better check before the procedure and to my shaking surprise, I was pregnant. We have had two previous miscarriages and chemo, so I was extremely paranoid throughout the whole pregnancy. Plus there was all the myths about the cancer reoccurring due to my body now allowing a foreign object to grown inside me, a baby. Until I held our baby in my arms, I would not believe this was finally happening. It has been about eight years now since we first thought that a baby would complete our family.
I had a wonderful pregnancy. I would do it again tomorrow. I wanted every experience that went with a pregnancy, good and bad. I wanted morning sickness, most people don’t believe me but I wanted the proof that the baby was in there. But I felt fabulous the whole time. I also wanted the labour; it’s true. I did change my mind after 15 hours of labour. Plus I wanted to have a huge belly, but I only put on 6.5kg (all baby). When you don’t think you can have a child, you realise that you want to feel everything that other people have talked about. I believe the easy pregnancy was because of my healthier lifestyle.
Then on December the 4th at 1.25pm our baby daughter, Madeline, arrived, weighing 3.7kg. She was perfect in everyway, just a bit bigger than we all expected, thinking we were have a 6 pound baby and getting an 8.2 pound (possibly another effect of that healthy living?).
Now the next challenge for a breast cancer survivor, can I breast feed? I only had surgery and treatment on my left breast, so throughout the pregnancy I could see my right breast changing. It was very amusing to physically see the difference between my two breasts, one that is dormant and one that was preparing for a baby. So we thought that I might be able to feed a baby; after all mums with twins manage. We found out that our Madeline is not fussy. She feeds from me well, although I used a nipple shield for the first few weeks so she wouldn’t damage the only breast.
In the first week my right breast grew to about three times the size of the left breast. Trying to find bras that fit has been a mission. My husband now calls me “One-hung-low”. You just have to laugh.
Madeline feeds from me all day and we give her one bottle of formula at night before bed. She drinks from anything as long as it has milk in it. But now that she is six months we are starting her on solids and going to start weaning her onto complete formula. Even though I would love to keep feeding Maddie for a year or until I can, I now need some more tests. I have not had extensive tests like a mammogram since before I was pregnant. So unfortunately I have come to this six month compromise with my husband. But Maddie has been given a lot of my good living in the last six months. Even if I couldn’t breast feed at all, that was the least of our worries. It is a bit unfortunate that my previous cancer has interrupted my breastfeeding but at least I’m here with a daughter.
So that is my story in short to date and I’m happy to share it with you all. I could go on forever about other aspects of my treatment and after. Yes I had cancer, but not now, and yes I had chemo, but that is my past, Madeline is my future.
Deidre Moate
May 2009