In January 2025 I was lying in bed, felt something different and thought, “there's a lump there”. I didn't find the lump because I was checking. I found it because I rested my hand on my chest and it felt different to how it normally felt.

So, I did what most people would do and looked it up on Google. Everything I read said the odds of it being breast cancer were on my side: only a slim chance for someone my age, with no family history and a non-smoker. It sounded much more likely to be a cyst or fibroadenoma (a noncancerous breast lump). But it was new, and it was a lump, so I decided to get it checked.

It took a few weeks to get in to see a GP, as the GP that specialised in women's health at my local medical practice who I wanted to see, happened to be away when I first called. In February I had my appointment with her and after examining me she said pretty much the same thing. She said it was unlikely to be breast cancer, but referred me to the breast clinic anyway, because all lumps get referred. In March I had a mammogram, an ultrasound and a biopsy all in the same appointment and had a follow up appointment pre-booked in to discuss the results.

A week later, I went back for the results and went alone as I was expecting to be told everything was fine and to get on with my day. Looking back, I can see the extra three specialists who came into my appointment should have told me something, but at the time it didn't register. That’s when I was told I had breast cancer and we moved straight into talking about surgery and treatment. It was a lot to take in on my own.

I had a 29-millimetre lump, hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer.

My fourteen-year-old daughter knew I had gone for an appointment to find out my test results, so when I told her the diagnosis, I was also able to tell her straight away that there was a plan: surgery, maybe chemotherapy, probably radiation therapy, and that things would carry on being normal. It helped that some of her friends' mums had also had breast cancer and were doing well, so she could see that things would be okay and it wasn’t such a scary thing.

Before surgery, I also had an MRI. Because younger breast tissue is denser and harder to read on a mammogram, they wanted to check there wasn’t any other areas of concern. The MRI picked up a second area on the other breast, but after a biopsy that one turned out to be nothing cancerous.

My surgery was all booked and ready to go, when I got told that I should also get genetic testing done first – which pushed my surgery date back. The genetic testing results came back clear. Funnily enough, it showed I was less likely than the general population to develop breast cancer, somewhere around 0.8 percent. It really drove home that it does not matter how low the odds are. It can still happen to you.

My surgery was a wide local excision (partial mastectomy) with flap reconstruction, using tissue from under my armpit to fill in where the lump was removed. The surgeons did an incredible job. I woke up and couldn’t even find where they had operated! I had clear margins and clear lymph nodes (good news), but the results from the full sample tested after surgery meant I was upgraded from grade 2 to grade 3, so it turned out to be more aggressive than initially thought. Due to my age, I was recommended chemotherapy - so then I had four rounds of chemotherapy, followed by 10 rounds of radiation.

I am now on ongoing hormone therapy for five years: a monthly Zoladex injection and a daily letrozole tablet. I was more nervous about starting this than I was about chemotherapy, because chemotherapy is short, but hormone therapy is years long and I’d read that it can come with various side effects. Thankfully for me, the side effects have been manageable. I get joint aches that move around my body, and some fatigue, and hot flushes, but I’ve learned small tricks, like sleeping with my hands in loose fists so my fingers don’t seize up overnight. It’s what I call a “slightly worse version of normal”, not a different life altogether. Although it can at times feel like I’m a 36-year-old living in a much older woman’s body.

Work was supportive throughout, and life mostly stayed on track. I was still doing the school run, cooking dinner, and catching up with friends. It slowed down during chemotherapy and radiation, but it never really stopped, and these normal things helped give me things to look forward to through my treatment.

I hope my journey shows that breast cancer is not just something that happens to older women. Knowing what is normal for your own body, and acting quickly when something changes, is something every woman can do, regardless of age, family history, or lifestyle.