March 2023, that’s when my breast cancer journey really started. At this point, I was living a very uncomplicated life. Husband was working through what was an immensely wet farming year, my son was nicely settled into year 3 having moved schools and my daughter was heading for primary school in September and living her absolute best life with the childminder whilst I plodded on with my school admin job. I’d noted a change to my left breast, I couldn’t really put my finger on what felt different (if i’m honest here, I did not regularly check my breasts), but it did – feel different and so I went to the GP.
I actually didn’t even consider the fact it could’ve been cancer, I just knew something felt different, and the GP agreed although also couldn’t find a discernible lump. I ended up being referred through the NHS 2-week cancer pathway so it all happened very quickly -I landed in front of a breast consultant at the local hospital, he examined me, and agreed that the tissue felt lumpy but relayed that he wasn’t concerned, and so the conversation ended quite quickly and I left feeling reassured.
Almost a year later – the changes to my breast were at this point, not only palpable – but also visual, I could see a lump. The previous reassurance from the consultant unfortunately greatly influenced my urgency to see the GP and so I did not rush to go back, but when I did (January 2024) I was sent once again to the breast clinic, only this time, despite my total ignorance I was sent for an ultrasound, a biopsy, and a mammogram. Even then, I was so sure that what we were dealing with was a cyst that when I walked in to be faced with a consultant and one of the breast care nurses I was totally oblivious to what was coming.
‘We are expecting this to be a cancer’
Shit.
Firstly, I was on my own. I hadn’t taken back up, I had assumed everything was fine, simple, solvable – probably hormonal and therefore I didn’t take anyone with me. In that moment, I almost vomited. My thoughts turned immediately to my children, was I going to die, and then, ‘but I was here a year ago….’
I was promised a circle back to that conversation, it never happened – and maybe, maybe the cancer wasn’t there 10 months before. But, maybe it was and maybe I wouldn’t now be stage 4 had further tests been done at the time. Regardless, it’s not a path I allow my brain to wander down anymore because it doesn’t solve anything and at the time, things then happened so fast that it didn’t matter what had happened – all the energy I had needed to be focused on what was to come.
I had a CT scan, on Easter Sunday no less, which showed at the time, no spread outside of one lymph node, but a very prominent 5cm lump in my left breast. I could breathe, it was curable (or so I thought) and subsequently following the biopsy results and a triple positive diagnosis I began a course of neo-adjuvant chemo and immunotherapy.
Triple positive cancer for context is a sub-type of breast cancer, there are a few that can be identified, but triple positive is receptive to and therefore grows quickly with the presence of oestrogen, progesterone and HER2 – which is a protein found on breast cells encouraging quick cell growth. Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy refers to treatment that happens pre-surgery, the intention was always to have surgery but first, we wanted to shrink the tumour and if possible encourage a complete pathological response, i.e. the chemotherapy would annihilate any cancer cells and leave nothing left behind.
I think I might leave it here and come back for my treatment journey as this feels a lot already!
Until next time.
-Sophie
Anyway, here we are. 
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