My Story
In 2018, I did a Park Run. I loved it (especially the surreal bagpipe player in the fog). But it was a spur of the moment thing, I was utterly unprepared, things rubbed (!) and I was left feeling a little uncomfortable! When the sore-and-lumpy feeling continued beyond a couple of weeks, I figured I’d better get checked out…. which led to a breast cancer diagnosis. 5 years on, I'm attempting another 5K run (this time with some prep), to raise money for Cancer Research UK. I have always been grateful for the new research and methods that fed into my treatment - if I'd had cancer even 5 years earlier, my experience would have been very different. - I was able to have a single type of surgery (therapeutic mammoplasty) rather than needing a double mastectomy and reconstruction. - Through oncotyping, they could assess whether chemotherapy was likely to be helpful for me, rather than me having it 'just in case'. It wasn't. I didn't. - There were options around the treatments I could take afterwards, meaning my oncologist could prescribe something that suited me a lot better than my medical history suggested the 'preferred' treatment would. I'm raising money today so that people who are diagnosed in 5 years time will have even better treatments, with less fear and even better outcomes. I'm also running as a thank you to the doctors, nurses, physios, charities, researchers etc who fixed me up last time!
