‘I tripped over a scooter – I never imagined I’d be diagnosed with cancer’
A Hull mum thought a lump she felt on her body was the result of a bad fall but an ultrasound at the doctor’s revealed it to be something much more sinister.
In 2020, Sarah Walton, 46, tripped over the base plate of a scooter outside her son’s preschool and fell on her side. She developed a lump on her breast and assumed it was the result of internal bruising.
She went to see a doctor and, after rounds of checks, a biopsy revealed it was a cancerous lump. It was a shock, obviously, you just think the worst you know, I thought about my husband and my son.
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“But my team was very positive, they told me it would be a couple of weeks off work and radiotherapy. They were great and that’s what they believed at the time, but after all the scans, on 16 March, 2020 they broke the news to me that it was metastatic.
“It was incurable and that word is just awful. If you think a breast cancer diagnosis is bad, a secondary diagnosis is horrible.
“My son was seven when I was diagnosed, and we’ve only just introduced the word ‘cancer’ because I didn’t want a shadow hanging over him where he would get up every morning and think you know if I’m still going to be there.”
Metastatic cancer is the biggest killer of women under the age of 50 with cancer in the UK. It is also called advanced breast cancer or stage four breast cancer and it is incurable.
It occurs when primary breast cancer has travelled to another part of the body. The areas that MBC travels to are the bones, liver, lungs, brain and lymph nodes.
Sarah added: “When you’ve got stage four, which is also called metastatic, they’ll never say that you’re cured, they’ll always say there’s no evidence of disease because they can never say you are cured for sure.
“So we are basically just living from scan to scan, hoping that the treatment that you’re on is working and that they won’t find anything.”
A campaign called ‘The Darker Side of Pink’ is currently in exhibition at St Stephen’s to highlight women like Sarah who are living with metastatic breast cancer. The exhibit includes 31 life-sized transparent figures, each representing a woman diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Since the campaign launched in October 2021, six of the 31 women have died.
METUP UK, a charity and patient advocacy group, said the transparent figures were designed to depict the invisibility of the disease. Thirty-one women will die in the UK every day as a result of the condition.
As a community that comes together to support each other, Sarah said losing a friend can be really difficult but she has to remind herself that their story is not hers and she has to continue fighting for herself.
“I think that hits you hard and you have to tell yourself their stories are not my story. If you’ve met them, you have to let yourself grieve briefly, I think about humans with fondness and allow myself to be sad about what’s happened.
“But then you’ve almost got to pick yourself up and think, ‘That’s not going to be me, I’m not going to be a statistic, I’m gonna live for I don’t know how many years’.”
Each of the figures in the exhibition features a QR code that, when scanned, plays a video from a real-life woman living with the condition. Since the videos were filmed in 2021, six of these women – Leila Asoko, Emily Roberts, Sally Nyland, Nina Masoud, Philippa Hetherington and Anne Cargill – have died.
The exhibition, hosted by St Stephen’s and Hull Truck Theatre will be on display until March 22. Charity founder, Joanne Taylor said: “There is a critical need for awareness of the disease. This is what I have experienced over the years.
“Even patients who have had primary breast cancer are unaware of the red-flag signs and symptoms of metastatic breast cancer and the many issues that MBC patients face when diagnosed. There is a real and pressing need for change and that’s what this exhibition aims to highlight.”
Joanne hopes the exhibition will highlight not just the signs and symptoms of the condition, but also the urgent need for better access to drugs, treatments, surgeries and clinical trials, and the lack of data in this area. Find details of the exhibition venues and dates by clicking here.
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