The Canberra mum of six is in remission after being diagnosed with breast cancer last May
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00:00 So it's great to be into 2024 and to leave my most intensive cancer treatments behind me.
00:07 I'm really excited that I've been given remission, I'm told I'm in remission from my breast cancer.
00:13 A journey that started in May last year where I was diagnosed after I went and booked in for
00:19 a scan after some worries about soreness in my breast and I got on a very fast train
00:27 called Cancer Treatment. It's kindly but it's fast and I had surgery, I had 20 rounds of chemo
00:35 and three weeks of radiation. In that time some of my friends have been diagnosed and I've seen
00:40 them start this journey as well. It's so intense, it's like your life gets taken over for a little
00:46 while but I'm one of the lucky ones. I've come out of this, at the moment I'm cancer free and
00:53 some great advice that was given to me by a doctor during the Christmas break was to just
00:58 move on, have the life that you're lucky enough to have and just enjoy it and get your testing
01:06 done from time to time as you need to take the meds you need to take to keep the hormones away
01:11 that were feeding it. But try just to get on with life and enjoy that life that you've got and I
01:18 just think it's a really precious reminder of how lucky we are, those of us who are still here,
01:23 it doesn't last forever, life doesn't last forever. Oh yeah, this process was really scary
01:31 at the beginning and I thought what can I do with it to make it something in my life I'm proud of
01:38 and at the same time I've seen other people take the same attitude towards me and some most
01:43 surprising people come out of the woodwork to be supportive and helpful and to message me and bring
01:48 me my family some food and things. Not that we're starving but it's just it's a lot to get through
01:54 and my husband was under the pump as well with keeping up with, we have three kids with autism and
01:59 two different school communities to keep up with and there's a lot going on in this house of six
02:04 kids and mum and dad and the grandma. But I was just blown away by the love and the kindness
02:11 that was shown to me in the last year and that's changed me really, it's left me
02:18 feeling that I'm more precious and that's a huge gift to anybody. You know we don't necessarily
02:28 get up every morning and think that we're the best thing since sliced bread but after all the
02:34 years of serving the community, the community really came in around me and people would stop
02:38 me in a soup bar and ask me how I'm going and it was beautiful. I can't really explain it enough
02:44 and so it's probably warmed me up a little bit as a person and I hope to spread that as I go.
02:54 My only message to women who are 40 to 50 and younger is if you have any concerns about
03:04 cancer or any funny feelings or you're tired or you just want to know some more, you book in for
03:09 one of those scans, that's what they're there for. Don't let anybody tell you that you can't have one
03:12 because you can, if you have any concerns. So you book in and you jump up and down for yourself
03:18 and if there's something to know, get into it quickly so that you can have the best chance
03:23 to get on top of it. I feel very, very fortunate that after all that hard, hard work and all the
03:28 commitment from the doctors and the nurses and the you know and the community that I'm coming out the
03:33 other side at the moment, very strong and with a new lease on life. But 2023 will never leave me
03:42 and I'm very glad I was here with all these great services and people around.
03:48 Yeah.