My fight continues as others fight with me ?

I'm now a Pink Hero

Did you know that every day 58 people in Australia are diagnosed with breast cancer and nine Australians die every day from this disease? Below is a small part of my personal journey and the desire to bring awareness and it may be long but I BEG and I mean BEG that you keep reading!!!!! So many people don’t share their experiences and this needs to end NOW.

I have been very blessed to have a massive, massive team of Prof’s, Doctors, Nurses, physicians of every specialty that look after me  and try to improve my way of life given the many medical issues that can linger for decades and the major medical problems I have today that are a result of my Cancer treatment and several aggressive surgeries leave me permanently disabled. 

I thought six months of chemotherapy and then surgery and six weeks of radiation would be easy for me and then I could get back to my normal self, work and life.  

It has been seven years and I am still struggling and fighting to improve my life, health and all the things I have lost because of this disease and that list is long and keeps getting longer and harder.

This is not a female only disease it does not discriminate! My wish is that all young women and men are regularly checked from what would be considered an early age. As I have seen so many young women die who never got to live their full adult lives and I consider that so unfair that this is happening to women in their 20’s more and more.

I was looked over for more than two years having undertaken mammograms and ultrasounds more than twice a year. When I expressed my concerns over and over about the very large masses in my breast’s that were painfully obvious and also caused me significant pain. I was told you have no breast cancer in your family so it is just fatty breast tissue.

I knew it was more and I was told by a private hospital to stop bothering them and find a new hospital or just deal with it.

They were so wrong and it took the kindness of a private plastic surgeon to confirm what I already knew. That wonderful woman saved my life by arranging special testing within 24 hours and confirmed I was not going bonkers for all of those years. My beautiful mother was devastated but was right there with me while they did over 20-30 core samples and officially gave me a diagnosis.

Within weeks of this diagnosis I was in the chemo chair undertaking treatment and an education session at the same time which is normally done a month or so before you start treatment.

Anyone who knows the real me or has worked with me knew I was breed to be a strong, tough and a resilient woman, daughter, wife, mother, sister and aunt to many. Whilst that was not to everybody’s liking I needed to be strong for my mother, sisters, husband and my beloved daughter as we had already lost my dad and brother.

I was also very blessed to have one of my sisters who is a nurse by my side for every chemo treatment.

I've decided to shave some of my hair, cut and colour it and raise funds for world-class breast cancer research to help National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) towards their vision of Zero Deaths from breast cancer.

Please support me and my pledge to save lives and help everyone understand just how prevalent this disease is and no you don’t have to be in your sixties to get help. I was turned away by so many organisations as I was 45 about to be 46 and they only assisted women closer to 60 and that is also a very worrying situation as we don’t all have family and my A TEAM fighting on my behalf.

Every donation, big or small, will help as there are so many in need of medical assistance.

Please can we work together, to stop deaths from breast cancer.