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

Think of the Positives

I've always considered myself a pretty positive person and even at the start of my chemo i still felt that way. But to be honest, one of my main struggles, along with being sick for the past 15months, has been the struggle to maintain that positive attitude. It's hard to look at yourself in the mirror each day when you're at your worst and your bald, tired and only have one boob, and still smile each day.

But, I'm proud to say that i did that, and the reason for that is because of all of the support that i received, in particular from Mat and Macy, that I can still smile each day and have a laugh at my own expense.

So even on my worst days (which are over now I hope!) I still tried to think of something to get me through.

Some of my favourite things were -

1. Not having to worry about doing your hair each morning
2. In the middle of winter, just when i thought it was really cold, a hot flush would come along and warm me right up!
3. Not having to wax or shave
4. Chemo brain is a legitimate excuse for all the things i forgot and the silly things i would constantly say
5. The money i saved on not having to get my hair done
6. If a meal wasn't that great, it didn't matter because i couldn't taste it anyway
7. I had a great excuse to get out of an invitation if i didn't want to go
8. When people make promises to someone with cancer, they tend to stick to them!
9. Even my friends were too scared to bag out 'chemo girl'
10. People always tell you how good you look when you have cancer, but never how bad
11. Getting bigger and better boobs at the end of it all
12. Getting a break from the housework
13. My house always smelt awesome from all of the flowers that I received
Posted by Sarah Crimmins

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