HAVING IGNORED EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF BREAST CANCER, AMANDA HANISON, 49, IS DETERMINED NO ONE MAKES THE SAME MISTAKE
“Lying by the pool on my sun lounger it felt so good to have finally made it to Hong Kong to visit my sister. I watched my 12-yearold twin boys diving in the water and felt so happy that everyone was getting on so well with David, my new partner of 18 months, who had joined us on this trip of a lifetime.
Th e only thing that was bugging me was when I looked down I could see a lump between my collarbone and my left breast.
I hadn’t really noticed it before and kept telling myself it was probably just some muscle or fatty tissue. It never occurred to me it could be breast cancer. It was nothing like the classic pea-sized lump people oft en say is the start of their cancer experience I didn’t mention this ‘bump’ to anybody at the time as I didn’t want to spoil the holiday. We were all having such a lovely time. Even when we got back home I was so caught up in getting the boys ready to go back to school that I didn’t get round to making a doctor’s appointment.
But when I was at the GP’s surgery for one of my son’s hayfever prescriptions I said, ‘While I’m here, can I just run this thing by you?’ My GP asked my son to leave the room, examined me and said, ‘I need to get you seen as soon as possible.’ I knew from the look on her face it was serious. Two days later I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It turned out I had a large 8cm tumour. I was fast-tracked for treatment and told I would need a mastectomy.
Although David and I were dating, we weren’t living together and suddenly I had this really serious diagnosis. I didn’t tell him about it until I had my emergency referral.
I knew how I felt about him but I didn’t know how he was going to react. I remember saying, ‘I totally understand if you want to walk away from this - this is not your problem and I don’t know where this is going to end.’ I was so nervous. But he turned to me and said, ‘I am going to look aft er you and get you through this… and when you are better we are going to get married.’
It was such a wonderful thing to say. It made me feel really safe. I know I would have found the inner strength to deal with it all if I had been on my own but I knew I had him and could lean on him.
My ex-husband has always been a great dad, but I had been living on my own with my boys for nearly eight years and now I needed looking aft er. David stuck to his word and was with me every step of the way. We moved in together just before I started chemotherapy. I never had to worry about what I looked like aft er surgery or about losing my hair. He constantly reassured me and told me he loved the bones of me and didn’t care about the changes because I was still me.
At the start of my tr
