While the champagne was bubbling and music was blasting in her best friend’s bridal suite, Erin felt a wave of panic when she found a lump on her right breast as she adjusted herself into her bridesmaids dress.
Within a few weeks, Erin had a scan and biopsy, just to be sure. But when Erin and her partner went to the GP’s office to collect the results, it was clear that it was bad news. The biopsy confirmed the lump was solid papillary cancer - a very rare, slow growing breast cancer that is usually found in older women. Except, for Erin, it was aggressive and growing fast in her 28-year-old body. She quickly began treatment, undergoing lumpectomy surgery, followed by three months of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation, which ended in December last year.
For Erin, treatment changed everything: she froze her eggs in case she wanted to have children later in life, and she was put on long-term hormone treatment which put her into menopause. And yet, some things still felt the same for Erin as she tried to keep up with her ‘normal’ life as much as possible during treatment.
Today, Erin is back at work and enjoying her footy again. It’s easy to get swept up in it all, but once she finished treatment, the negative thoughts and worries became less frequent and were further away from the forefront of her mind. For those going through it, It. Gets. Better.