Mum-to-be undergoing chemo after breast cancer diagnosis at 10 weeks

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A mum-to-be who thought a lump in her breast was due to hormonal changes discovered she had breast cancer at 10 weeks pregnant.   Amy Scanlon, 30, initially put the lump in her left breast down to hormonal changes after undergoing fertility treatment - but decided to get it checked out just in case.  She and her partner, Gerald Catney, 34, an operations manager, had been overjoyed when they found out they were expecting in February 2024 after undergoing four rounds of medicated cycles.  But their joy was short-lived when Amy was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 weeks in on 21 March 2024 - after months of appointments, tests and ultrasounds.   Now, with just three months to go before her due date on 18 October, Amy is undergoing chemotherapy as a preventative measure to ensure the cancer does not spread.   When her daughter is born, Amy will have three more rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, and 10 rounds of Herceptin infusions - as well as between five to 10 years of hormone therapy medication.

Transcript

00:00So, in January, I found a lump on my breast. I sort of felt a little bit of a twinge and

00:10thought I felt a lump and then couldn't feel it anymore. I thought it was just something

00:15muscular, and sort of forgot about it for a little while, then about a week later I

00:20felt it again and it was definitely there that time. My partner could also feel it,

00:27so I made an appointment with my GP and got an appointment basically the same day. I went

00:34to the GP and they examined me and at the time I was going through some fertility treatment,

00:43we were doing medicated cycles in order to get pregnant, so my hormones were a little

00:49bit all over the place. She basically said that she didn't want to tell me that it was

00:56nothing, but given my age and my circumstances and my hormones being a little bit out of whack,

01:02that it was probably just a hormonal vibroadenoma, which is like a benign lump. So, to be

01:10honestly aside, she obviously wanted me to get checked out anyway, so referred me to the Breast

01:16Clinic and red flagged it to get checked out. About a week or two after I'd been to the GP,

01:23I found out that I was pregnant, which we were so thrilled about and I had basically

01:30convinced myself at this point that I didn't have cancer and that like all signs were pointing to

01:38being a vibroadenoma. I had a bit of a wait to actually get to the Breast Clinic, so they did

01:48the biopsy and I was sent on my way, completely was like, I don't have cancer, this is nothing,

01:55and I was chilling for the next week and a half. So, about a week and a half later, I got a call

02:03asking me to come in to the hospital the next day to speak about the results of my biopsy. So,

02:12obviously kind of freaked out from that because if it was nothing, they would have just probably

02:18just told me over the phone. So, yeah, so basically went in on a Friday and was told

02:24that they had found cancer cells in the biopsy. The surgeon that was going to be dealing with me

02:31was off on holiday, so I had a different doctor who didn't really give me an awful lot of

02:37information. I was basically just told, yeah, you have cancer, and obviously it was really

02:45unexpected, so we didn't know what questions to ask. I was in so much shock, I was literally just

02:53crying. All I could think about was like the pregnancy and what was going to happen. Yeah,

03:03it wasn't as bad as I thought that it was. I was kind of left out thinking like I'm not dying,

03:09I'll be okay, and I got my date for my surgery. I had to remove the tumour.

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