Real life stories

Rowena Coleman, 56, is married to Richard and they live in Odiham, Hants. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2000.

“It was by pure chance that I found my lump and I often look back and feel scared at how easy it would have been to miss. I was leaning forward in the bath to reach the soap and just happened to look down. There was a puckering of my skin, as if somebody had pulled a thread. Standing up, I couldn’t see a thing.

Still, I wasnÂ’t particularly worried. In fact, I breezed through the initial hospital appointments so divorced from what was going on that I must have been in denial. I waited for the ultrasound, flicking through some magazines, then, totally unconcerned, waited for the results of the biopsy. I was eventually called in at the end of the day and, when the consultant told me he was 90 per cent sure I had a malignant tumour, it was such a bolt from the blue I burst into tears.

Dealing with the worst

IÂ’m a pragmatic person and I donÂ’t like making a fuss about things, but the thought of going into hospital terrified me. I phoned a friend to drive me home and I can remember sitting alone in my living room after she left, waiting for Richard to come back and wondering how I was going to tell him. My senses to everything around me felt so sharpened. I looked at our beautiful home and at the view from the window of a canal and woods and I just couldnÂ’t believe that it might all end for me.

Richard took the approach of, ‘We’ll handle this.’ We’d been married 33 years and I knew him well enough to understand he had to focus on facts, not on something that might or might not happen. One of the worst parts for me was hearing, afterwards, that he’d broken down and cried in front of a friend. He’d remained so strong throughout the whole treatment and was such a rock that I found it almost unbearable to picture this vulnerability.

Doing research on the Internet really helped. I’d been catapulted into a totally alien world, but I’m a statistical analyst so gaining as many facts and figures put me firmly back on territory I could deal with. In the end I opted to have a mastectomy. I didn’t need to – the consultant thought that removing the lump would be enough – but I knew I would never feel the same way about that breast again and I didn’t want to always be worrying about the cancer coming back.

Life through new eyes

After the operation I underwent six months of chemotherapy, working part-time from home before returning to the office. But something I hadnÂ’t expected was that everything suddenly seemed so different. IÂ’d always loved my job, but now I was noticing small things I hadnÂ’t before; petty office politics, little bureaucratic decisions I couldnÂ’t see the point of. It was as if the breast cancer had taken off my blinkers and I was looking at the world through different eyes.

I’ve since left and am now throwing myself into local voluntary work, which I love. I’m on the committee that organises the village hall, I help edit the parish magazine and I run the local cinema. I feel as if my body was hijacked, but now I’m back – happier and more fulfilled than ever before.”