My SBC Journey: Pauline

I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2017 after noticing pain and changes in my left breast. Because the cancer was quite aggressive and also found in my lymph nodes, I was given staging scans. This was a chest x-ray, a liver ultrasound and a bone scan. These came back clear, except the ultrasound had found something abnormal around my aorta, so a ct scan was arranged. The ct scan picked up that I had a horse shoe shaped kidney. It also picked up a spot on my liver that had not been found with the ultrasound. I am grateful for my horseshoe shaped kidney or I might not have known about the liver. My oncologist arranged an MRI scan to get a better look at the spot. She decided it would be scanned again after 3 sessions of chemotherapy.

In December 2017 when I was seeing my oncologist to get my half way results after half of my sessions of chemotherapy I was told the lesion on my liver had shrunk by 4mm. It had responded to the chemotherapy. This meant by treatment course now changed from curative to palliative. I had secondary breast cancer with a metastases in my liver. It was a few weeks before Christmas and in my head I was convinced it was going to be my last one. My sons were 10 and 11 when I was diagnosed.