The following week I received a letter to say, not to worry but would I return to the breast screening because they needed to do another one? Well, “Not to worry” was not the words I would have used. I worried considerably for the whole week. Went to the breast screening again when I had a biopsy, an ultrasound and a lot of poking and prodding. I became more and more nervous, but at the end of that day the doctor who I saw said in actual fact, she couldn’t find what they had recalled me for. It turned out to be something with a very long name, but it was a fatty nodule that they had found. But she said it was not cancerous, nothing to worry about and I stepped out the door that day, saying to myself, “This is the first day of the rest of my life.

They said that no it was not a cancerous tumour. It was some sort of fatty nodule that wouldn’t cause me any bother at all;

And you should just leave it and it would be fine;

It would be fine and I would not need to be, one of the things they said to me, I would not need to be called in a year, because people who they were a bit iffy about they would recall in a year. My normal three-year recall would be fine;

But she did agree to have someone come and speak to me, who did come, and talked me through each of my mammograms from the very first one that I’d had in 1999. He was then able to point out the cancer which had been there in 1999. But they had not spotted it. I know myself that mammograms are not a hundred per cent. They’re only as good as the people who are reading them;

And he pointed out the cancer in the one which would have been, well in the two that had been taken one week after each other. It was only like a, as the top of a pencil maybe, white spot. And he was saying to me, “Well you see it, how small it is?” But I was saying to him, “But, you are the, you’re the expert. I don’t see anything.” I mean there were just funny black things as far as I was concerned. But he, but then he was the top man looking at them. Obviously the top man wasn’t on that day and whoever did read them, didn’t see that. But to see it six months later was amazing. Absolutely amazing;

It had grown that much?

It had grown that much. It, in fact, on those six month ones it was practically taking up half of my breast, on this photograph. Obviously not in the breast but in this photograph it was taking up half the breast;

Did you have that discussion with him, you know, how come it wasn’t picked up?

A little, a little. Yes I had a little discussion with him but I really had decided before I went that, if that was the case, there was no point in going down that road. I mean, what was I going to do, sue them? Or was I going to make a fuss or? Because at the end of the day it wasn’t going to change one solitary thing to my life. So, I just wanted to know for my own benefit, and perhaps give them a wake-up call that they’d look more carefully at someone elses. It wouldn’t help me, but it might help someone else, that was my view on that;

At one point, you mentioned that you thought, oh mammograms are no good. Were, what was that time, what were your thoughts about?

Well my time, my thoughts at that time were, how did they miss it? How could they have missed it? I could have understood them having missed it if I had just gone for the screening and merrily on my way. But for them to recall me, and still miss it, I felt was beyond belief. That was what I felt. So I felt that mammograms were useless. But I have stopped thinking that. I have stopped thinking that. They are useful for a lot of people. A number of people in the [support] group will say, “They saved my life.” They went for the, they were fifty, or whatever age they went. Something was picked up, they had the mastectomy, and they’re living normal lives now which would not have been the case otherwise. So I know they are useful and I do know that they’re not, they’re only as good as the people who are reading them.

I think screening is a really good idea. I encourage everyone to go for screening. I don’t, for all the sort, you know, at first I used to follow it up with, “Well, it was useless for me, but it might be good for you.” I don’t, I’ve grown out of that, I don’t say that now. I encourage people to go and I encourage people who are over sixty, or sixty-five or whatever the upper age is, to go. You know, I say, “Go, make an appointment and go because it’s worthwhile.” I do encourage people to go. I think it’s a good idea.

I went for a mammogram in 2001, I think it was in October time. And I was delighted to hear I’d got the all clear. It came back fine, there was nothing on the mammogram. My friend had been diagnosed with breast cancer a few weeks before me and she had gone for her mammogram as well but that’s when they found a shadowy area on the mammogram which they were suspicious of. It turned out actually she was diagnosed then with breast cancer and I was devastated for [my friend] but at the same time I was relieved for myself that mine was clear. So, everything was fine until February the following year, 2002. And I found a lump in my left breast. I must say I’m not very good at examining my breasts on a regular basis but, I was actually reading in bed one night and got a funny sensation, actually just ran my hand over my left breast and found what I thought was a lump.

As time wore on and I was left waiting and waiting and I was called in to see the doctor. Well I think really I knew then that, what the diagnosis was, and I was told it was breast cancer. That was on a Tuesday and on Friday of the same week I saw a consultant who advised me to have a mastectomy, a full mastectomy. Which I decided to go for. So I was booked in for surgery inside a couple of weeks;

A few years later then, when you turned fifty you had your first letter;

Yes, for screening yes, aha.

And that one was totally clear?

Yes. Yes;

And you just had a letter a few weeks later did you?

Yes, I must say now, I did, I felt very upset, I was very annoyed that when I was told by the consultant that I had breast cancer I thought, this can’t be, how can this be? My mammogram was clear. But he informed me that there are some types of tumours, in his words, they hide, they can hide from a mammogram and a mammogram will not detect them, so that really worried me as well. I thought, well what’s the point of having a mammogram if they can’t detect all types of breast cancer? But I’ve been told, and I didn’t really believe it at first, but from more information that I’ve read, that this can happen and it’s just, it’s one of the risks you take.

So that very first mammogram you had, that was in October?

October 2001;

And then, just about four months later?

Yes, I found a lump myself.

I had an appointment and they did, they checked me out and said, “yes, it’s a lump and we need to look more, further into it.” They did a mammogram, they did an ultra-sound, they did a needle aspiration to see if they could, sometimes they can disperse it and nothing. They said “no, were still not happy, we need to do a biopsy to make sure what type.” Because they couldn’t get the result they wanted through the needle aspiration. So they did a biopsy, which proved clear and they said, “oh, it all looks okay and now you’ve got a choice of whether you want the lump removed or whether you want it left alone. Because that’s what people decide, it’s up to them because all the symptoms, all the tests have proved clear.”

The mammogram also showed that it was clear?

Everything, everything, according to their initial tests, was clear. So the way I felt, I thought, well I would rather, I’d heard about people having breast, you know lumps and then it developing into something else or whatever so I thought, no I want to get rid of it. And that way, you’ve finished with it, that’s the end of the subject and you can just move on;

And we had our holiday booked so they said, “okay, go on holiday, when you come back you do it then.” So we came back from holiday on a Sunday and on Monday I went in, had it removed in a day clinic and you get, automatically you get given a, when you leave at the end of the day they give you an appointment, a 10 day follow-up appointment. So I had this appointment and I thought, okay, I’ll go to it and not having heard anything in between, you thought, well no news is good news because if they’d seen anything different, if there was anything to worry about then you would have heard;

So I went on my own, that’s the first time, you know, because when I initially went for my check-ups I went with my husband. And he looked at me and he said, “you’ve come on your own?” I said, “yes, because I’ve just come to get the results” and he sort of looked at me and it still didn’t click and he said, “oh well, good job we took the lump out because there are cancerous cells there and we need to do a marginal clearance around, we need to remove more of it and do a marginal clearance depending on the size of the lump.

And we also need to test for the lymph nodes because with a breast you get lymph nodes under the arm” so he said, “we need to remove those to check to make sure it hasn’t started to spread because with the younger women, it moves very fast.” And it was, so I thought, okay. I was sort of like, all right, okay, if that’s what needs to be done, it needs to be done. And I just really didn’t think much about it. I think, I obviously must have been in shock but I said, “okay” and he said to me, “okay, I’ll write you a prescription for Tamoxifen and go and get this and you can get started on that and well arrange a quick appointment for you.