After saying my goodbyes to loved ones, I prepared for the worst. Then a miracle happened…
Driving along in the sunshine, I suddenly felt a popping sensation in my left breast. That’s weird, I thought. Later that day, I felt a lump in the same spot and a knot of worry formed in my stomach.
I volunteered for a cancer charity, so I knew how important it was to check your breasts and did it regularly.
This lump had come out of nowhere, so I made an appointment with my GP.
‘I’ll refer you for a biopsy,’ she said.
A few days later, my husband, Dean, came with me to hospital to get the results.
‘You have stage three, triple negative breast cancer,’ the doctor said.
I felt like I’d been kicked in the face.
‘Please take notes of everything the doctor is saying,’ I mumbled to Dean, dazed by the news.
We left the hospital still reeling and I said to Dean: ‘How will I tell my parents?’
When I was 18, we’d lost my younger sister to meningitis, so I was their only surviving child.
While I plucked up the courage to tell them, I had a lumpectomy, but the surgeon couldn’t remove all the tumour, so then I began chemotherapy.
Three weeks later, I went to see my parents.
‘Mum, Dad… I have cancer,’ I told them. They were both heartbroken. Over the next weeks, the side effects of the chemo hit me hard. It made me sick and my hair fell out, too.
Afterwards, I began a course of radiotherapy and because doctors hadn’t mentioned my prognosis, I tried not to think about it.
Feeling better now the chemo had ended, I even returned to work part-time.
But nine months later, I was due to give a presentation, when I began slurring my words.
Then I had a strange sensation — almost as if honey was pouring from my eyes.
Dean took me to an out-of-hours doctor, who immediately referred me to hospital, where Dad joined us.
After tests, an oncologist came to speak to us.
‘You have secondary breast cancer in your brain,’ he said. ‘It’s terminal. I’m afraid you have just a matter of months left.’
The three of us stared at each other in shock.
I was only 42, I couldn’t be dying.
‘You’re not going to die,’ Dad insisted. ‘I’m not having it!’
I had surgery to remove the plum-sized tumour, then more radiotherapy. But five weeks later, it came back, and had to be removed again.
Being a Christian helped keep me going, and I was in so much pain, I thought: I’m ready to go to heaven.
But it was devastating imagining how my friends and family would cope with my death.
With time ticking, I had thought: Why not get everyone together to say a last goodbye? ‘I want to have a funeral while
