Jackie Beaver, a mum of two living in Manurewa, was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2022, at just 40 years old. She’d found a lump in her armpit two years earlier while she was breastfeeding her second child and was told by her midwife it was probably nothing to worry about.
Life went on and when Jackie noticed the lump again, she took herself off to a GP to get it checked out. Jackie was relieved to learn it turned out to be nothing, but a month later, she discovered another lump, this time in her right breast. This one turned out to be cancer, but thankfully Jackie acted quickly to get an early diagnosis, which is crucial for survival. This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Jackie is helping Breast Cancer Foundation NZ spread the message that knowing the normal look and feel of your breasts could save your life.
In 2022, I decided to finally get a lump checked that had been in my left armpit area for a few years. When I first noticed it, my midwife said it was likely just fatty tissue was caused by hormonal changes and that it probably wasn’t anything to worry about. I was busy with a new baby, so I got on with it and didn’t think much more about it.
Over the years the lump came and went. One day while I was putting togs on I noticed it again and decided to get it checked. Around two months earlier I’d had a Mirena put in, so I wondered if that was making the lump more prominent to make me notice it. My cousin had died from breast cancer the year before when she was 45, that’s what made me decide to get it checked, just to find out for sure.
In May that year, I had my first ever mammogram and ultrasound. They discovered that yes, there was a lump, but after a final needle aspiration they confirmed it was nothing sinister.
One month later, I was back at my GP after finding another lump, this time in my right breast. This one was quite different, it was painful, and I knew that pain was not normally associated with breast cancer. Feeling a bit silly after the first false alarm, I was reluctant to take up more time from my doctor and everyone else involved in the process. But with my family’s history with cancer, I told myself it’s better to get everything checked.
My doctor examined me and reassured me he didn’t think it would be anything as the lump appeared to be close to the surface and was painful. He didn’t think that pointed to cancer, but he referred me to be sure.
I was given a lower priority to be seen at the breast clinic this time. It was in August, two months after seeing the GP, that I had another mammogram and ultrasound, but this time they wanted to do a biopsy as well. I knew then that it wasn’t good.
In three and a half months, I had developed a 30mm lump in my breast and it had spread to my lymph nodes. I had grade 3, stage 2, ER-positive breast cancer.
Hearing this was my worst nightmare. I had two young children, two and six at the time, and I’d watched my mum go through cervical cancer, lung cancer and melanoma. The shock really hit me when I walked into the chemo room for the first time, I just froze and broke down. I know other people get surgery before chemo, but mine was so aggressive that they needed to shrink the tumour before they could take it out and stop it from spreading. If I’d had surgery first, it might’ve given me time for it to all sink in.
I had six rounds of chemo, three weeks apart, then a month later had a lumpectomy. They took out some lymph nodes during the lumpectomy and found one node hadn’t responded to chemo, so I needed to have more surgery two weeks later to get more lymph nodes removed. Then three weeks of radiation, and now I’m on hormone treatment for five years.
Getting an early diagnosis was probably the difference between living and not living. I think at the rate my cancer was growing, it would’ve spread really quickly. I’m so glad my doctor didn’t brush it off, considering how recently I’d had the first mammogram. I’m grateful he took me seriously and that I wasn’t afraid to get tested. I guess because of my mum’s experiences, she influenced me to be proactive with my health. And when my cousin died, it really hit home that I couldn’t let that happen to me, because of my children. I was petrified by the thought of leaving the kids.
It’s scary when you find something because you don’t want it to be there. But that’s exactly why you should get it checked. You don’t want it to get any worse. Or have that regret of ‘I wish I got on to it sooner’. If I’d left mine any longer, things could be so much worse for me, and how much scarier would that have been.
I’m now a very big advocate for “know your normal” and getting everything checked. Get to know what your breast are normally like and what lumps and bumps are normally there. As younger women, it’s easy for us to assume we’d never get breast cancer. But two of my close friends have also had breast cancer in their 30s. One had pain in her armpit, and her lump was close to her rib cage so she couldn’t feel it, she just thought it was muscle pain.
Perhaps my story can highlight that breast cancer can and does happen to younger women. I could’ve easily said I’d just had a mammogram so there was no way I could have breast cancer. I thought surely it wasn’t going to be, but I still took action and I’m thankful I’m still here today because of it.
