In June 2024 myself, Ryan, Helen and Dave will be undertaking the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge to raise money for Breast Cancer Now. The challenge is to complete the 24 mile circuit in 12 hours.

It’s vital that research is funded to improve and introduce new cancer drugs since it’s expected that 1 in 2 people will get cancer in their lifetime. 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer. We need more treatment breakthroughs.

A bit about why we’re doing this:

In October 2022 I was diagnosed with incurable stage 4 breast cancer. I was 39 and had a 2 year old son and a 1 year old daughter. My first thought was that I wouldn’t live long enough to walk them to school, and that I wouldn’t see them grow up, and it was absolutely terrifying.

I was loving being a new mum. I’d put on weight due to back to back pregnancies and had been running to lose weight. One day I woke up with an excruciating pain in my left breast area. I put the pain down to over exercising and couldn’t run for a while. The pain lessened after about a week but was still there as a dull ache for months. We searched for a lump on numerous occasions but couldn’t find one. I googled breast cancer symptoms and had none. There is no family history of breast cancer. Everything I read indicated that it’s very rare for people under 40 to get cancer. I don’t drink excessively and I’d only been overweight since having children. I then started getting back pain and couldn’t sleep on my back at night. Finally I went to the doctor - my back/chest had become so painful I couldn’t even sneeze. The doctor said I’d pulled a muscle. Eventually, my pain became so bad I ended up in hospital. They ran all basic diagnostic tests and everything came back clear. The doctor was about to send me home but he decided to send me for a CT scan as he could see I was in considerable pain. They found a lump in my left breast that was only 1cm - a lump isn’t usually detectable until it’s at least 1.5/2cm. The cancer had spread to my spine and other bones. Because it had spread, I couldn’t have surgery to remove it, so I had 5 courses of radiotherapy followed 6 rounds of chemotherapy.

Fortunately, my cancer is triple positive, which means it’s fed by hormones and therefore easier to treat. I now have immunotherapy drugs that have kept the cancer stable for a year since completing chemo. The treatment I’m receiving has only been available for around 10 years.

I’ve learnt so much about breast/cancer since my diagnosis. My triple positive breast cancer is responsive to treatment, but triple negative breast cancer is much more difficult to treat. Some of the drugs used to treat breast cancer are used to treat prostate cancer. Scientists are discovering new things all the time, and we hope that you’ll help raise funds by sponsoring us to do this challenge, to improve cancer survival and treatment for everyone.

I don’t know how long I’ve got left, or how long my medication will continue to work for, but I’m not going down without a fight and I want my children to be proud.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you can sponsor us!

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