‘I de­cid­ed to share my sto­ry be­cause peo­ple need to know that you have to be your strongest ad­vo­cate when it comes to your health. The deep dread you feel when you get di­ag­nosed with can­cer is in­de­scrib­able.

I used to think if I ever got it I would go the al­ter­na­tive route be­cause I was con­vinced chemo and ra­di­a­tion would kill you faster, un­til I saw a ter­mi­nal friend (whom some doc­tors had giv­en up on) start treat­ment and go on to live a full life for an­oth­er six years. I said then that if I ever got can­cer, I would go to her doc­tor and do what­ev­er he told me.  

The irony

I found a lump un­der my arm in mid-Sep­tem­ber 2020 and with­in two weeks I was di­ag­nosed with stage three B, HER2 pos­i­tive/hor­mone-neg­a­tive breast can­cer that had al­ready spread to my lymph nodes.

This type of can­cer is in­va­sive and ag­gres­sive but treat­able with both chemo and drugs that tar­get the HER2 pro­tein. One of these drugs is avail­able in the pub­lic health care sys­tem, the oth­er one is not. My on­col­o­gist de­scribed the com­bi­na­tion of tar­get­ed drugs as a one/two punch - each mak­ing the oth­er more ef­fec­tive in killing the cells try­ing their hard­est to kill me.

I didn’t ap­pre­ci­ate it then, but with can­cer, months can mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween mem­o­ries or memo­ri­als.

En­ter Neoad­ju­vant Chemother­a­py

Neoad­ju­vant chemo (be­fore surgery), a sin­gle-side mas­tec­to­my (fol­lowed by the oth­er a year lat­er) and ra­di­a­tion, all com­bined to give me the best chance I had. I sourced the oth­er drug pri­vate­ly, and it was ad­min­is­tered at St. James with the rest.

Dur­ing treat­ment, I was told that this spe­cif­ic drug was very close to be­ing de­clared a for­mu­la­ry drug - avail­able for free in the pub­lic sys­tem.

That was three years ago, and it’s still not pub­licly avail­able to the hun­dreds of peo­ple di­ag­nosed with HER2+ can­cer each year here.

I hope if I were to write some­thing next Oc­to­ber, I could fi­nal­ly say that Per­tuzum­ab was now at pub­lic on­col­o­gy cen­tres na­tion­wide.

 At the time of my di­ag­no­sis, I thought about my then sev­en-year-old niece and I could not imag­ine not be­ing around to see her grow up. I told my­self that I wasn’t go­ing to go down with­out a fight; a switch flipped in my brain and that is how it has been ever since.

It was not an es­cape mech­a­nism or de­nial, I just de­cid­ed to fo­cus on bat­tling it through nu­tri­tion, fol­low­ing the doc­tors’ ad­vice, and trust­ing the sci­ence.

I don’t use the word ‘cured’ when asked be­cause it feels like a jinx, but two years post-treat­ment, I’ve shift­ed my men­tal­i­ty from ac­tive can­cer pa­tient to some­thing a lot less easy to de­fine. Every­thing is po­ten­tial­ly ‘some­thing’ now. Is that dull pain in my shoul­der be­cause I slept bad or…? Were those moles al­ways there? The first year I ran to the doc­tors for every pain, and some­times I still have a hard time not spi­ralling in­to a pan­ic for every ‘lit­tle’ thing.

My men­tal­i­ty is, if I get knocked down eight times, I’ll get up nine.

Can­cer changed me but doesn’t de­fine me. Mak­ing the de­ci­sion to live with scars in­stead of breasts wasn’t easy. But be­ing born out of this dis­ease is a strength I hon­est­ly didn’t know I had.

Each scar is my tes­ti­mo­ni­al. I have phys­i­cal proof that I’m a fight­er. Can­cer is my bar­room brawl.

Mes­sage to oth­er war­riors

Even though it feels lone­ly, it does not have to be. The re­sources ex­ist. Speak to oth­er pa­tients and find the sup­port you need. Don’t give up. Do what you can to make your­self stronger and fight it. Refuse to let can­cer just hap­pen to you - YOU hap­pen to can­cer.

Don’t wait, get screened

Who­ev­er reads this, please get reg­u­lar screen­ing. Ad­vo­cate for your­self. Ask ques­tions and make sure you un­der­stand the an­swers. Make noise on your be­half if nec­es­sary, to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. Too of­ten pa­tients have symp­toms brushed off or are told to ‘wait and see’. Don’t. Get sec­ond, third and fourth opin­ions if you have to. You have to fight for your health be­cause no­body else will. Can­cer is treat­able if caught in time.

If you or some­one you love is fac­ing a can­cer di­ag­no­sis and would like to reach out, you can mes­sage me at: https://www.face­book.com/Sar­i­taSaysFork­Cancer.