Anna's story
My name is Anna, and I was diagnosed with lobular breast cancer. What’s important about my story is that it didn’t start with a lump. It was just a tiny shadow—something I almost talked myself out of noticing. For a couple of days I kept thinking, Is that different? Am I imagining it? Then I asked myself what I would tell a friend, and the answer was obvious: Go and get it checked. So that’s what I did.
I was lucky. My GP took me seriously straight away, and the very next day I was at the Breast Institute having a mammogram and a biopsy. That’s when they told me it was cancer. Lobular cancer doesn’t form a lump; it grows in a sort of string, which makes it harder to find. The fact that I caught it at all still feels like a stroke of luck.
Everything moved quickly after that. Within a month I had a mastectomy. Then I had to go back to have all my lymph nodes removed. After that came chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which took up the best part of a year. The treatment itself was hard, of course, but in a strange way it was also straightforward: you just turn up, do what you’re told, and keep going. You get on the treadmill and you stay on it.
What I didn’t expect was how hard the afterwards would be. A year later, everyone was saying, “You look great! Your hair’s coming back! Your eyebrows are coming back!” And all I could think was, I feel awful. I genuinely didn’t realise that the emotional crash comes after the treatment ends. During treatment you’re focused, you’re busy, you’re surviving. Afterwards you’re left trying to find yourself again.
I also had some bad luck with reconstruction. My implant didn’t take, which meant three more surgeries. I even went on holiday with my drain bags because life doesn’t stop just because you’re fed up. It’s taken another full year, but I’ve just had reconstruction surgery again, and this time it’s worked. I’m thrilled—but it’s been two years now, and I’m still not “back to normal.” I don’t think you ever go back to who you were the day before your diagnosis. You have to learn who you are now, and that’s the hard bit.
Even small things, like my hair growing back, can feel confronting. I look in the mirror and think, That’s not me. So I’m still figuring that out too. But I am grateful—grateful I found it, grateful for the care I had, grateful to still be here.
If someone came to me today with a brandnew diagnosis, I’d tell her two things. First: go to Maggie’s and talk to people. I never thought that would be my way of coping, but helping others helped me. Second: find something positive to mark each step. I bought a plain wedding ring and added a tiny pink diamond after every chemo session. It wasn’t expensive, but it gave me something to look forward to. When people asked how I was, I’d show them the new stone instead of talking about how rough I felt. By the end I had six diamonds, and then a darker one for radiotherapy. The jewellers knew me by name.
Those little stones helped me through something enormous. And that’s what I’d say to anyone starting this journey: find your version of a pink diamond. Something small, something yours, something that reminds you you’re still moving forward.
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