Earlier this year one of our beautiful vets at Hamilton Vet Clinic, Dr Jen, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dr Jen is much-loved both within our team and more broadly within our community of pets and their owners. Her friendly, bubbly attitude is truly inspiring. Our entire team, although initially quite shocked, has rallied to support Dr Jen during this challenging time for her and her young family. We have decided to use Breast Cancer Awareness Month to raise some funds for Hunter Breast Cancer Foundation (HBCF) to thank them for supporting Dr Jen and her family so wonderfully during this time. We would also like to raise awareness of breast cancer more generally and particularly encourage younger people to regularly check their breasts.

Please help us by donating to this fantastic local organisation.

Jen's Story

"To say the last four months have been a whirlwind of events and emotions is a massive understatement. As a 41 year old mother of two young daughters cancer wasn't even on my radar. That's until one Sunday I felt a small lump in my right breast. As I was still breastfeeding my one year old baby at the time I was not too concerned - it was probably just a blocked duct or some inflammation. Just to be certain I booked in to my doctor. Well things went pretty fast from there. A mammogram, an ultrasound and some pretty bruising biopsies later I was diagnosed with a malignant breast cancer (the nasty type of tumour). Disbelief and shock set in quickly - how was this possible! I was young and healthy with no family history of breast cancer. Well it turns out cancer can happen to young people too.

Since my diagnosis I have undergone a double mastectomy plus lymph nodes removal (meaning I had to stop breastfeeding my baby), started four months of chemotherapy (I'm half way through presently 🍾🍾), lost my hair, had to cut back on my hours and experienced some pretty tough moments. But what I have also experienced is some amazing love and support from family, friends, neighbours, community and cancer support groups and this is what has impacted me the most ❤️.

My treatment has all been through the Newcastle Calvary Mater Hospital where the most empathetic beautiful staff have helped me through this journey and also put me in touch with some amazing support organisations like the Hunter Breast Cancer Foundation. The HBCF offer a number of very important and helpful services for cancer patients and their families during the tough journey of diagnosis and treatment including house cleaning, a free wig service, lawn maintenance, transportation to treatment and appointment plus many more. I have been lucky to be able to accept some of these services which has been such a help during the last few months'"