I had the chemo poured into me

MY HEALTH EXERIENCE: JACKIE HOYNE

I KNEW from the way staff in the hospital looked at me after I had the mammogram that the news was not good. It was December 23rd, 2009, and I was told that I would not get the results until the first week in January.

I decided not to tell people as I didn’t want to ruin Christmas for my family and friends, so it was an emotional rollercoaster for me. I wanted to savour every minute of Christmas as at the back of my mind I was wondering would it be my last one. Life tastes very good when you know that you may be about to stare death in the face.

I had been married for only a year and over Christmas three different people told me they were going to have babies. It is not that we had been planning to have a baby but it made me think about what lay ahead.

I did confide in three people, including my husband Axel, and when I went back for the results on January 6th he came with me. They told me that it was a stage three tumour, that it measured 11cm and that I would need to have chemo to shrink it before having surgery.

I actually had noticed changes in the tissue on my breast almost a year earlier, but I had just put my head in the sand and dismissed it. By early December I could no longer ignore the lump.

The news was devastating, but from the word go the staff were so positive they made me positive – the breast care nurse told me recovery rates for breast cancer are up to 95 per cent and that I should keep that figure in my head. Because I did not smoke and only drank in moderation I already had an advantage.

They were talking about getting an appointment with an oncologist a week later to discuss treatment, but an inner voice told me that the treatment had to start as quickly as possible and I spoke to the breast care nurse about this.

She got my appointment moved forward and I was back in the bed in Waterford Regional Hospital on January 14th having my first treatment. It was a very aggressive tumour – it had grown over Christmas – and I had the chemo just poured into me. Chemo is horrible – it is grim but you do get through it.

To be honest there is so much whining going on in Ireland now, but I started my chemo two days after the earthquake struck Haiti. I was sitting there in my lovely bed, watching television and there were little children in Haiti who desperately needed medical help and there I was, medically in the lap of luxury.

It made me think that not all of the legacy of the Celtic Tiger had disappeared – a lot of good did come out of it. We are a first world country and I can say at this stage that I got fantastic treatment the whole way through and I am very grateful for it.

The oncologist had spent a lot of time with Axel and myself, explaining what would happen and I knew that after chemo I would be facing surgery and then radiotherapy.

My husband is Dutch and he attended all five sessions of chemotherapy – I have a needle phobia and I was terrified. I know I could not have done it without him. I did notice that there were not too many Irish husbands or partners there – a lot of women were there with mothers, or sisters or close women friends. I am not sure why that is.

I felt very sick when I was going through the chemo. I didn’t have the side effects that a lot of people have but it is tough and, I have to be honest, losing your hair is terrible. It comes out in clumps – in the bath, on the pillow, falling down your neck. My advice to other women would be to just go and get it shaved off when it starts to come out.

I did get a wig. They can be very hot, but I was lucky with the timing – my hair had started to grow back by summer as my treatment was over. I also got lots of scarves. I never had the courage to do a Sinéad O’Connor on it. That wouldn’t be me.

I had chemo every three weeks and by the time I was finished I felt so close to the staff in the ward there. They were so kind and you felt they were on your side, just willing you to get better.

I was also put on herceptin, a targeted drug therapy which in simple terms tells the cancer to switch off. It is really expensive. I have friends in the UK who told me that you can’t get it there on the NHS but it is widely used in Ireland. I don’t have private health insurance but I honestly never felt that I was denied anything because of that.

Another thing that really helped during this period was having access to a social worker. I am self-employed. You expect to be under emotional strain when you are going through treatment for cancer, but you never think about the financial strain.

I worked as a banker in London for 15 years but in 2005 I came home to Thomastown in Co Kilkenny and opened a business, the Blackberry Café – so there were a lot of worries. I didn’t have income insurance, but anytime I was down, a phone call to the social worker was a lifeline. She could tell me what benefits I was entitled to and ease my worries.

I was very stressed about having to have a mastectomy, but the counselling and reflexology I received free from the South Eastern Cancer Foundation really helped me.

After surgery, a full biopsy was done on the breast and the nodes (through which cancer spreads to other parts of the body). The chemotherapy had been very effective. I could not have had a better result. The nodes were showing signs of regression, which meant the cancer was beginning to spread but it had been halted in time.

I felt so grateful that my breast care nurse and oncologist had listened to me in January. It would be awful to feel later that if only things had moved faster that the outcome could have been better.

From the word go I was very open about the fact that I had cancer. There was no elephant in the room which people were afraid to talk about. Because I worked in the cafe everyone knew me, so I just looked people in the face and told them what I had.

In fact, I was the one who ended up putting others at ease about it. My attitude was: “I have this, I will deal with it, this is life.” I am that sort of person. I am upfront.

Contracting cancer was a very traumatic experience and the treatment is mentally, emotionally and physically very difficult. But I felt I had to meet the challenge head on and my attitude was positive throughout. That helped me.

It is also very important to have an outside interest to focus your attention away from yourself and your illness. I was not able to work in the cafe on a day-to-day basis, but I did things I had not had time for before, such as marketing the business which helped to keep it going.

The aftermath of cancer is not easy. Treatment finished in September and I still feel so tired. I am able to work only part-time.

I have body image issues and my husband constantly reassures me. I put on a lot of weight – maybe I cannot blame that totally on the cancer – but it does bother me. But the key thing is I have my health back and a deepened love of life and living.

When I think back to last year, my abiding memory is not the sickness or the tiredness or the fear, but the tide of human kindness which engulfed me and helped me along the road to recovery.

I think often of the staff at Waterford Regional Hospital, the South Eastern Cancer Foundation and the Whitfield Clinic radiology unit. All I can say is a heartfelt thank you to all of them. I was delighted to find that help is available from so many sources such as the Irish Cancer Society and the Marie Keating Foundation. All that makes life easier.

You have a lot of time to think when you are ill. I may be still tired, but I have come a long way. Mortality is something everybody has to live with – it could be next week or next year, you could be killed in a plane or a car. There’s no point in worrying about it. Actually I worry less now – having had cancer gives you a different perspective.

Maybe I have become a little more blunt and intolerant, but I hope not in a bad way. If I could be about two stone lighter I would be really happy, but the main thing is my husband still loves me, I enjoy life and I feel very positive.

Cancer is different for everybody, so I should not be doling out advice, but I would say to people that it is good to be positive. Listen to your body but do focus on other things.

In conversation with MARESE MCDONAGH