Learning she was dying, Amanda McDonald, 50, knew how she wanted to say goodbye
Surrounded by a sea of people, I felt overwhelmed with love, unable to believe so many had gathered together just for me. It was November 2015 and I had been joined in my favourite restaurant by 250 loved ones, all because they wanted to raise a glass and celebrate me and my life. But this wasn’t a milestone birthday party. It was my funeral, and I was the guest of honour, having planned it all myself.
It was two years earlier, in 2013, when I’d first found a lump in my left breast. As a cancer charity volunteer, I knew how important it was to examine your breasts regularly and act early if you found any irregularities, so I made an appointment to see my GP that week.
He examined me and I was referred to Royal Stoke University Hospital for a biopsy. A few days later, my husband Dean, then 48, came with me to get the results. As we walked into the consultant’s office hand in hand, I caught the grave expression on the doctor’s face. Moments later he was gently explaining I had stage three, triple negative breast cancer.
If I had any chance of beating the disease it was vital I began treatment immediately, starting with a lumpectomy in November 2016. The surgeon removed the tumour effectively, but as it was a high-grade cancer I started a course of chemotherapy. The side effects were brutal – chemotherapy made me sick and my hair fell out, too. ‘You’re still beautiful,’ Dean told me, knowing how much it had knocked my confidence.
Afterwards, I began a course of radiotherapy and within nine months I felt well enough to return part-time to my job in advertising.
I hoped my brush with cancer was over, but towards the end of 2015 I started slurring my words and felt as if something sticky like honey was pouring from my eyes.
Concerned, Dean took me straight back to hospital, calling my parents Alan and Carole, who promised to follow on.
Doctors scanned my brain, and hours later the oncologist told me that I had developed secondary breast cancer in my brain. I underwent a harrowing course of whole-brain radiotherapy and would need two further surgeries to remove malignant tumours from my brain, but there was nothing more they could do.
‘It’s terminal. I’m afraid you have just a matter of months left,’ the oncologist said.
The room fell silent. None of us had been expecting this and
