Rebecca Tucker was diagnosed with breast cancer at 38 weeks pregnant, and her recurrence diagnosed on her son Aiden’s 1st birthday.

Imagine being on the cusp of your happiest moment. For my husband Russ and I, it was when I was 38 weeks pregnant. Nursery’s ready to go, names are shortlisted and your greatest stress is when your waters might break and what name goes best with your surname. So trivial now in hindsight.

You see, 2 years ago, at 38 weeks pregnant with our second child, our world was turned upside down. A few days before, I’d found a lump in my right breast.

I had no history of breast cancer in my family, so I wasn’t worried at all. At 32 years, I was too young to get breast cancer and well, I was pregnant? You can’t get cancer when you’re pregnant can you?

This is how naive I was. My husband, our parents, our friends, this is how naive we all were. Cancer was the last thing any of us expected. In fact, it wasn’t even the last thing – it wasn’t even on our radar!

In my obstetrician’s office, I learnt the hard way that cancer doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care how good or bad your life is, or what your plans are. My obstetrician said “This isn’t good news guys.” as his hands shook uncontrollably while he read my report. Still no thought of cancer. “It’s the Real McCoy, You have Stage 2 Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. Breast Cancer.”

Receiving that news, you can never forget the gut wrenching feeling. A feeling where it may actually feel better to be hit by a bus.

On August 9th in the early hours of the following morning, Aiden was born. We welcomed our beautiful son, Aidan Jack Peter Tucker, into the world. It was such a bittersweet moment. You want to feel joy, but it was clouded with so much sadness, fear and anxiety.

I met with my breast surgeon, Dr James French., 3 days after Aidan was born. I also met my magnificent breast care nurse, Bronwyn Williams.

They recommended a lumpectomy, and informed us my cancer was extremely aggressive, grade 3, and was not responsive to any hormonal therapies, a subtype referred to as Triple Negative Breast Cancer. It’s particularly nasty and one of the more challenging to treat. Given the large size of the tumour, 2.5cm, it was suggested I move straight to chemotherapy. And that I do so as quickly as possible.

When Aidan was 8 days old, I had my first of 4 chemotherapy infusions. My tumour had already grown to 4.8cm – almost doubled! Chemo was grueling and the fear of the unknown left me feeling a bit like a ticking time bomb. This was our life for the next 8 weeks with infusions every fortnight.

I also trialed a new treatment to try to preserve my hair known as scalp cooling I wore a freezing cap at roughly -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) for 4 hours during my infusions to stop the chemo from penetrating the hair follicles. Luckily, it worked for me and whilst my hair thinned significantly, I didn’t look like an obvious cancer patient. I persevered with this extra complication mainly for our little girl Ava. It’s hard enough having to explain to a 3 year old that Mummy is sick, let alone looking sick and I didn’t want her to be embarrassed by my appearance.

Next step was radiation. In the peak of Summer, I completed 6 weeks of daily radiation. By week 5, my skin was beyond purple, and showing signs of blistering. Other patients warned that when I just couldn’t take one more session, radiation would be over. This was exactly right. I quietly cried through the end of my final session. The pain was excruciating and unbearable, but I was done on Valentines Day 2017.

I finally finished treatment, but what people don’t realize about cancer, is things don’t just go back to normal once treatment is done. So many issues arise through treatment that last long after. So although I had completed my official cancer battle and was all clear, I still had so many challenges and struggles. My breast care nurse Bron, really helped me navigate this period and became so much more than my nurse, but a dear friend and critical support person for myself and our family.

I still couldn’t lift my son following surgery and because radiation had shrunk my muscle causing shoulder troubles. Bronwyn suggested weekly physio to help rebuild my strength.. She also organised fortnightly occupational therapy to assist with breast lymphodema and a series of hard seromas that were forming. I was also continuing to see my oncology psychologist every 2-4 weeks as I struggled to feel “normal” and felt like I couldn’t shake the worry of the cancer returning. I also had chronic ‘chemo brain’, where I struggled to focus, maintain a sentence and even read anything beyond a few paragraphs. It felt debilitating and I felt so far from the person I once was – a professional, switched on, savvy Marketing Manager and super organised Mum.

Finally, after almost 11 months, I returned to work. Life was just starting to return to normal as we approached my annual check-up and my “cancerversary”.

A week before my diagnosis anniversary, I went off for my annual mammogram and ultrasound. The mammogram was fine, but the sonographer found something suspicious and they did a biopsy. My anxiety went through the roof. Deep down,

I knew it was back. To everyone else, it seemed inconceivable that it could return. To me, I had never truly let my guard down and felt like I was still fighting cancer.

A few days later, on Aidan’s 1st birthday, our world was rocked again. We thought it was bad the first time I was diagnosed. At least then we had the bliss of being ignorant to what was ahead of us. This time we knew exactly what it entailed. It was shit. It was downright terrifying. How on earth were we going to do this all over again?

This time round, my previous diagnosis and treatment had a significant impact on my treatment options and created a number of complications. The biggest trouble was caused as a result of being only 5 months post-radiation. My body was still healing. The advice we continually received was that generally, there should be no surgery to radiated tissue for a minimum of 12 months to reduce complications. I wasn’t even at the halfway mark.

I had a mastectomy less than 2 week after being rediagnosed. Before I had even healed, I underwent chemo again, suffering because my body and immune system was still weak from my first battle and from surgery. This time doing it all with a demanding 1 year old and 4 year old.

If there was a complication or side effect that was possible, I incurred it. Seromas. Lymphodema Swelling. Nausea causing dehydration. Sensitive skin and eyes requiring me to sedate myself for relief. Peripheral neuropathy in my fingers and toes making it hard to even get out of bed some mornings. Skin necrosis. Expander failure. More surgeries. Specialised therapies including hyperbaric oxygen therapy seeing me travel a 4 hour round trip every day to Mascot. You name it, I tried or encountered it. But fortunately, it all worked and I’m alive.

Cancer doesn’t define me. Sure, it’s changed me, and has had a profound impact on me, but I’ve chosen to use cancer for good I guess you can say. I believe I was given cancer to change people’s lives. I use my story to empower people to act.

If any of you haven’t done a breast check recently, I hope you go home today and feel yourself up. Or I hope you go home and talk to your husbands and your children about me. You can tell them about that poor mother you met who was diagnosed with cancer when she was pregnant, and then again on her son’s 1st birthday.

I hope you follow my blog on Facebook – Bec Tucker Cancer Warrior and tell others to as well. So I can continue to be the voice in the back of your mind beyond today. We are all busy, and lead busy lives. We say we will take care of ourselves later. We are scared of the discomfort, inconvenience and heaven forbid, the bad news we just might receive, so we put of the tests.

There is no cure for cancer – yet. But the closest thing to that cure is early detection. So please, put yourself first, so you can enjoy more important firsts in your life.

Rebecca ‘Bec’ Tucker Cancer Warrior

Follow this   link to learn how you can share your cancer survivor story in the 1,000 Cancer Survivor Stories project.

I welcome your contribution.

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