Hi Laura,

Welcome to our forum, although I’m so sorry for the reason that you have had to join us. I lost my mum to secondary breast cancer 10 years before I was diagnosed. My diagnosis was 11 years ago and I had a second bout of primary mucinous cancer the following year. As Chriss says, we both had the shock of our lives when we were diagnosed and, in common with most people, we went straight into a blind panic. I thought that I was prepared, as I expected to get cancer at some time due to genetics. However, when I look back to those early days, I am totally ashamed by how I reacted. It was thanks to a lady called Dizzie and some of her friends on this forum that I began to view my situation more logically.

I found that this forum gave me the advice of other people with personal experience in cancer. I found this a great leveller. You are a lot younger than Chrissie and I were when we were diagnosed. It must be particularly difficult for you when you haven’t had a family yet, but I am glad to hear that you have been referred to the fertility clinic first of all. Chriss has already mentioned Dizzle, who is still active on this site. I am sure that she will be able to give you some pointers in this direction. Click on this and it will bring you to her posts. @Dizzle. Other ladies on this site have also been through this too, but I cannot find them for you at present, as my search facility on this site is not working at present – the technical team are trying to sort the problem.

How did you fare with the Oncologist yesterday? I expect that no definite decision will be taken on lumpectomy versus mastectomy, until you find out how well you react to chemo. I believe that one thing that scares us all after a cancer diagnosis, is the lack of control we have over our lives. Everything suddenly seems to be taken out of our hands. As Chriss said, this is not all a walk in the park. You will most likely have a hard year ahead of you, between treatment and surgery. Most of us feel that we lose that first year to fighting this disease, but things usually pick up after that and, you will gradually regain control over your life.

The current pandemic, makes things harder for anyone with cancer. Losing your hair is a small price to pay for life. Many people find that the cold cap doesn’t always preserve their hair anyway. The wigs you get are very realistic now and, it won’t be long before your hair grows back in. Make up is now very realistic for eyebrows.

The big factor to beating this is to keep positive. You need to find that ‘can do attitude’ – you can cope with hair loss, you can undergo surgery (as Chris said, this is usually the easiest part), you can do chemo, you can do radiotherapy, you can recover from this and, last but by no means least, I sincerely hope that you can have a precious baby at the end of it all. Having plenty of support from family and friends will help you to fight this and, I hope that you have that someone who you can bare your soul to when you need to.

You will begin to feel better when treatment starts and you feel that you are beginning to do something about this. You have been doubly unfortunate to find that you have two different types of cancer in the one breast, but it is treatable and, that’s what you’ve got to keep sight of. There is a current thread on this site about Triple Negative Breast Cancer, which you might find helpful. If you go to the blue banner at the top of this page and click on the search engine, then insert triple negative and click. This will bring up previous posts on this topic.

Please remember that we are always here to support you through this. Do please keep us in the loop with all that is happening with you.

Kind regards,

Jolamine xx