Beating Cancer

Two months before I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I met my cousin Olive. She’s a few years younger than me and we are the lookalikes in the family, more similar in appearance to each other than we are to our own sisters.

Carissa Casey

It was Christmas 2019 and Olive was readjusting to life after a tough battle with breast cancer. In June the previous year, she found a strange wrinkled patch on her right breast. Concerned, she googled it and learnt that if she lifted her arm and saw a dimple in the area, she needed to see a doctor. She did and was sent to St James’ Hospital in Dublin. A week later, she was told she had Stage 2 breast cancer.

There was no time to waste and she started on chemotherapy almost immediately. She had a mastectomy in January 2019 and then a course of radiotherapy.

She was cancer-free when I met her that Christmas, looking fabulous with her newly regrown hair, but she was still shell-shocked by everything that had happened to her. She told me afterwards: “It felt like I was talking about someone else. It all seemed to happen so fast.”

Listening to her story, I was astounded by her strength and resilience. At the time, I had no idea that Olive and I didn’t just have our looks in common and I would begin to understand some of what she went through.

In January 2020, I was called back, following a routine mammogram with the BreastCheck screening programme. I wasn’t too bothered. Olive’s experience was fresh in my mind, but I had been called back after a previous mammogram. The irregularity that time was just a cyst which was drained in a few seconds.

This particular time, the words ‘samples’ and ‘biopsy’ were repeatedly said during the ultrasound, but I wasn’t remotely worried. It was only when I was led into a private meeting room afterwards and the nurse asked me if I wanted a cup of tea that I realised something was up. After a pretty agonising week waiting for the biopsy result, I got my diagnosis: Stage 1 breast cancer. It almost came as a relief, at least I knew where I stood.

screening programme

My cancer had been caught early because of BreastCheck. Olive was under 50, so not part of the screening programme, but she had the good sense to pay attention to a change in her breast tissue and have it investigated. Having caught the cancer at Stage 1, my experience was nowhere near as tortuous as hers but she was still a rock when I called her with the news.

“You’re in for a rough few months,” she said. “But you’ll come out of it.” I had been bombarded with ‘stay positive’ advice since the day I left BreastCheck. Finally I had someone who had some idea of what I felt like and what lay ahead of me. And she was right on both counts; it was rough but I did come out of it.

At the time, Covid was some weird disease happening in China and I believed my treatment would involve a lumpectomy and some radiotherapy. By the end of March, Ireland was in lockdown and I had learned that I needed a mastectomy. The day before my surgery, the surgeon phoned me to say that the public operating theatres in St Vincent’s were now being used for Covid patients. All surgeries had been moved to the private hospital and he wasn’t sure he could get me in to have my operation. I would be admitted the following morning anyway and he’d do his best. I remember thinking how bizarre it was that I was now hoping to have a mastectomy the next day. I did.

For different reasons, neither Olive nor I could have breast reconstruction surgery at the same time. At first, Olive was told that she could have the reconstruction immediately. But she was called in before the operation because the medical team were worried that nodules from her cancer were in the skin of her breast. They told her in advance they wanted to remove everything and an immediate reconstruction wasn’t possible because of that.

“At the time I felt like this was a major setback but when I had time to think about it I realised that removing the breast completely was giving me a better chance that they had removed all the cancer,” she says.

Olive

medical advances

In my case, reconstruction surgeries weren’t deemed ‘necessary’ under the new Covid rules, so I had what was called a ‘tissue expander’ inserted until I could have the reconstruction. The tissue expander felt like a crumpled plastic bag where my breast used to be. I ended up having two additional surgeries that summer because of complications.

I am forever grateful for the significant advances that have taken place in breast cancer treatment, many of which have been funded by Breast Cancer Ireland. In previous generations, most women with breast cancer were given chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy ‘to be sure to be sure’. Oncotyping of cancerous tissue removed during surgery allows the medical team to see which patients need additional treatment, and which don’t. Thankfully I didn’t.

I had my reconstruction surgery in August 2020. Olive had to wait until October 2021. In both cases they took fat from our bellies (there’s always an upside) to create our new breasts. In Olive's case, they also grafted skin from the area.

We promised ourselves a ‘new boob’ night out which turned out to be my wedding at the end of that year. We both looked amazing, if I say so myself.

I found the treatment tough going and, if I was amazed by Olive’s strength of character before, I am only more so now. Her treatment programme was far tougher and went on for so much longer. I know there were times when she felt really low, but she’s never complained about any of it.

Today we are both thriving. Olive is a runner (we don’t have that in common) and just completed a half marathon. She’ll be running the 10k in the Glanbia-sponsored Great Pink Run for Breast Cancer Ireland. I’ll be walking the 5k.

While breast cancer is still a killer for some, many more women are surviving and thriving following a diagnosis, particularly when it’s caught early either through the BreastCheck screening programme or self-examination. The treatment is targeted so everyone’s experience will be different. With more funding for research of the type that Breast Cancer Ireland supports, more women will survive. And in the miserable pantheon of cancer diagnoses, that’s a good news story

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