Hi, my name is Sarah Crimmins. At age 28, when my daughter was only 11 months old (in December 2008), I was diagnosed with Grade 3 Invasive Breast Cancer.

Since then I have had a mastectomy of my left breast, gone through IVF, 4 months of Chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiotherapy, hospitalised with meningitis and just recently in December 2009, I underwent a prophylactic mastectomy of my right breast with immediate reconstruction and a reconstruction of my left breast using the latissimus dorsi.

At the start of my cancer journey I spent hours on the internet searching for similar stories to my own and in particular, photographs of those women so I could gain an understanding of what I was about to go through and although I found some, I didn't find many.

This is the main reason for my blog. I wanted to be able to share my experience and photographs of my journey in the hope that it will help someone else with the decisions that they are about to face.

This is the story of the worst year of my life, from finding the lump all the way to my reconstruction surgery and beyond.........

Please feel free to post some comments, actually i would absolutely love it if you would xo

June - July 09, Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is definately easier than chemo but still hard in it's own way. For some radio is a bit of a breeze because they don't get burns however they still get tired but for me I got both.

I had to have 25 sessions of radiotherapy and it was 6 days a week for 5 weeks which is pretty much the same as everyone i think. It became my new full time job basically because I had to get macy and i organised, drop macy off at my mum's or mat's aunties house, go to radio and be there for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half, pick macy up and then go home so she could have a sleep. Once we got into the swing of it it was ok but it pretty much takes up your whole morning and then you're too tired to do anything else.

For me, I got into the routine of dropping macy off, going to the gym, going to radio, picking macy up, grabbing something for dinner that night and then going home and both macy and i would go to sleep for about 2 hours. I found that if i didn't allow myself time to have that sleep though i was a mess. It wasn't a case of just sleep because you can, I really needed it and without it I found that i just couldn't really function.

Other than the tiredness for me was the burns. To begin with my skin held up really well but they did warn me that i had to be extra vigilant with the sorbolene cream that they gave me because of my fair skin so that was also a routine that i got into - taking sorbolene cream with me everywhere and trying to remember to put it on at least 3 - 4 times a day.

Unfortunately i still got burns quite badly. It didn't happen until about 3 weeks into the treatments but once it started it got really bad really quick. I started to put dressings onto the wounds along with the cream etc that they give you and that helps a bit but your chest is a really hard area to try and protect so it was uncomfortable and i found that it really affected my sleep. I wasn't even taking any pain medication at the start either but soon got into the habbit of panadol every 4 hours to keep on top of the pain. At the worst stage of the burns, i peeled about 3 times. It got so bad that i would have a shower and just the weight of the water on my chest would peel my skin off. Disgusting I know but that's how it was for me. If your reading this and have to have radio, don't worry you may not get this at all.

The good news is however that once it started to heal, it healed really really fast. I had to change my dressings twice a day and about 3 weeks after my last session of radio (yes, it keeps going for a while after the radio ends, unfair hey!) i found that it started to heal all of a sudden.

A good friend of mine who I met toward the end of my chemo was going through the exact same treatment as me and also had a young child and we tried to organise it so that we had our radio sessions one after the other and it made going to radiotherapy sort of enjoyable because we got to catch up every day and have a chat. Here's a photo of Vanessa and her boy Charlie. Love you Ness, you have been a wonderful support xoxo
My beautiful husband organised a dinner for us and his brother and wife (Jason and Hayley) to celebrate the end of my treatment. No more chemo and no more radio. I was so excited and really wanted to celebrate so dinner was perfect. What made it even more perfect was the fact that he had secretly organised for all of our friends that could make it to be in the lounge bar of the resturant for when we finished dinner so that we could all have some drinks together. It was the best suprise ever! Here are two photos from the night.
You can't really tell from these photos but had lots of bandages on my chest from the burns and had my scarf on all night to cover up my bright red chest. You could literally see on my chest and back exactly where the radiotherapy was aimed. Also, I dont know if this happens to others but i didn't really lose my eyebrows until the end of radiotherapy. I didn't end up losing them completely but just about. This photo shows them when they are at their thinnest. It must have just been that my old hairs fell out just as my new hair was starting to come through. My hair was starting to grow back very very slowly at this stage so i definately still had to wear a wig. Unfortunately though I got really drunk on this night (i couldn't hold my alcohol at all during radio!) and ended up taking my wig off at the resturant. Talk about embarrassing! Oh well it was a good night.
Posted by Sarah Crimmins

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