Living with Secondary Breast Cancer

By Kristine Eaton-Hampton

I have lived with this diagnosis for the last two years. It was not the imminent death sentence I thought that I was given on that fateful Friday in November 2006. My surgeon said he didn’t know if I had weeks, months or years but they would work to get me into remission.

I am now in that space, it is scary, challenging and uplifting. I live each day and plan for the future and we do things that we may have put off in the past.

I have just celebrated my 60th birthday surrounded by friends and family and I felt loved and supported by these people who have and will continue to support me no matter what happens in the future.

I was diagnosed with secondaries before they found my primary. This is not common as they found them in my peritoneum first but I think I may have been lucky as it is not a common place for people to be looking! I went through the chemo, ugh, and had surgery to remove the little bit that was still in my breast. That was six months I would rather not repeat but I would do it all again rather than face the alternative. I am now on Aromasin (one of the Aromatase inhibitors)

My wonderful husband, Gary, supported me through this process and helped me to decide to give up work when it all got too hard. We also decided to move house about the time my chemo was ending. This was a great decision as we moved from the hill in Wellington, with the wonderful views, all day sunshine and a beautiful old villa that we had lovingly renovated but it had all day wind and steps! This house also had a mortgage and we wanted to be debt free so that I did not have to work. This was made easier as we had been looking to move up the coast anyway and the diagnosis shortened the list of where to buy. I wanted to stay in the Wellington region so that I could stay with my wonderful doctors and we needed to be near to Mum so we could support her too.

We swapped all of the above for a flat section with a good size garden that I have been developing ever since and of course the house needed renovating, one of my other passions.

The next major event in my life was attending the Breast Cancer Conference in Rotorua in October 2007. I had been indecisive about going, and when a friend was having a significant birthday, decided that was more important. But the party was postponed and that was my cue; off we went.

I had no idea how many people would be there or what lay ahead. It was fantastic!

I had one goal, to find out about managing the pain I was enduring with my drugs.

I found a room full of the most amazing woman (and some men) it was so supportive and educating. But I also found a little group of woman living with their secondaries (metastases is a horrible word). These women were amazing and we stood outside the door for the workshop that was just for us and wondered what lay ahead. It took a lot of courage for us to enter that room and I found myself standing outside holding on to a woman that I had never met, giving each other the courage to enter. We could see candles burning and didn’t find that encouraging, we are alive and kicking I thought! The session was to give us hope – we had that by the bucketful – but meeting each other was fantastic and certainly did give me more hope. When I went to the conference I didn’t expect to feel special but the woman in that room were special. We were the odd ones out at the conference as most women with breast cancer live to a ripe old age and don’t get that diagnosis that throws your world upside down.

We were only given a short time together, and have already made suggestions that at the next conference we have the opportunity to spend a lot more time together, as we were from all over the country – Northland to Canterbury – and there are no groups outside Auckland to give us the support that we require. I look forward to Sweet Louise moving south!

What we realised is that now we had found each other we needed to keep in touch and we exchanged email addresses and we communicated that way.

However, I quickly realised that this wasn’t the best way to keep in touch or to reach the wider group of us special ladies. Ongoing discussions with the Breast Cancer Network (NZ) have been fruitful, and through Sweet Louise we now have an online forum where we will be able to communicate with each other and discuss the ongoing issues that we have.

And I did find some answers to my pain problems but I will keep that for another day and for the forum.

Thank you BCN (NZ) for listening to our needs and for the wonderful conference. I dedicate this to the wonderful woman in our special group, especially Sue Ryder who spoke up for us at the conference and died in 2008.