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

May 09, Fundraiser

Mat and I are really close to our families and we were never concerned about the support that we would get from them but to be honest it blew our minds! I honestly think my father in law cried more than i did the first day that I found out about the cancer and his way of dealing with my diagnosis was to do something about ensuring that we could afford the best treatment that I could get.

So began his mission for the fundraiser. When he first suggested it I told him no way, don't be silly we will be fine. Thanks, but no thanks. But the more he thought about it the more he wanted to go through with it and the bigger it became. He ended up telling me that whether i liked it or not it was going to happen and I didn't even have to turn up if i didn't want to but to just accept that it was going to happen. So i accepted it and kept my nose out of it otherwise i would have stressed about it because it turned out to be huge! He should be an event organiser I'm telling you!

It started off as a few kegs of beer at the local bowling club and ended up to be a huge event in the biggest room of the fraternity club with about 550 people attending! It was unbelievable. The theme was 'Pink and Bald' and as you can see from the pictures everyone had to come either bald or in something pink and everyone embrased the theme which was exciting to see.




I can't really explain how i felt that night though because it was like it was all for someone else and not for me all night. I think i tried to think of it that way so i didn't cry all night long or get too nervous when it came time to do the speech. I had decided a few weeks before that I would take off my wig at the end of my speech as well and i'm glad i did because i think it made those who knew me see me for how i was at that time and it felt good to not be hidden under a wig or scarf like i had been for 4 months already. It was quite liberating!

The fundraiser was organised to raise funds for the McGrath Foundation as well as for my surgeries and to all me to be off work for as long as i needed and that's exactly what it did. It was because of this fundraiser that we received about $36,000.00 which allowed me to be off work for 15 months and also paid for most of my surgeries and treatment. Although you get money back off the goverment it's extremely hard financially because you have to pay all of the money up front (e.g. reconstruction surgery we had to pay about $20,000.00 in 2 weeks) and without the fundraiser there is no way that we could have come up with that.

The love and support that was in the room that night was unbelievable. I had so many people I didn't know coming up to me telling me their own survival stories, or just wishing me good luck and just having people i didn't even know as well as those that were close to me donating money was ......... i'm speechless as to how wonderful it was!

Even the morning of the fundraiser was lovely because 'Raise the Gong' organised for a lady to come over to my house and give me a pedicure and a manicure which was wonderful because i hadn't been able to have anything like that as they tell you not to because of the risk of infection. But i only had one chemo session left so I thought 'why not!'. I got a spray tan for the night as well which in itself made me feel 100% times better and then Raise the Gong also organised for my makeup to be professionally done. Although i hadn't lost all of my eyelashes, i had lost most of them so the lady put some fake eyelashes on for me which I absolutely loved!

A good friend of ours who is really hairy organised to be waxed on the night in front of everyone and filmed it to put it up on YouTube as his way of getting us lots of money. He raised about $1,200.00 just on his own and put himself through a lot of pain. How awesome is that!

If it wasn't for the fundraiser I would still be on the waiting list to have the reconstruction surgery and I would have had to have had it in 2 parts. My left breast in one operation and then my right breast at another time when they could fit me in and that would have meant another 1 - 2 years of our lives being dominated by cancer and I couldn't think of anything worse. I was able to have the reconstruction surgery in the same year as my other treatment and for me, new years eve of 2010 was a fresh start all because of our wonderful family, friends and the community.

The beautiful girl in the picture with me in the pictures above is my best friend. She is another person who was a wonderful support all throughout my treatment (and my life really!). Thank you Laz for everything xoxox
Posted by Sarah Crimmins

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