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

Update, March 2011

A lot has happened since i last posted on here and i'm happy to say that it's all been ok. After my last post the plan was that my gyno would remove my left ovary all together and do a curet at the same time so he could send some cells away to be checked just in case. I was pretty upset at that decision but thought it would be the best one because he wasn't removing both, just one which still left me with a chance to have more kids and sort out the cyst at the same time.

Luckily though (and suprising for me) i got my period at the same time that they were trying to get me in for surgery which changed everything. He was still going to go ahead with the surgery but after speaking with my oncologist we decided not to worry and to see what my body would do and have another scan in 6 weeks time.

So i did and to my wonderful suprise, the 7cm cyst was gone! For once my body did what it was supposed to. The one on my right side had gotten slightly bigger but still nothing compared to the one that i had on my left so that didn't worry me.

From here i was feeling really good......my oncologist was happy with how i've been going. My fatigue symptoms have all but gone and i'm only a few months away from my 2 year mark for being on tamoxifen. If it wasn't so close to the 2 year she would have put me on Zoledex to stop my periods but she's happy for me to continue to have them and stay on the tamoxifen for another 3 years.

After all of this i've been really happy. Really back into the swing of work (a bit too much actually!) and having energy but then my gyno called me out the blue one day to say he'd booked me in for a curet the next wednesday (which would have been 2 days ago) because he still wants to check and make sure i dont have any abnormal cells. He really doesn't get it at all, this whole cancer thing. He's never treated a patient like me before (breast cancer, meningitis etc) and the whole time he was talking to me he made it sound as if he's really concerned that i have endrometrial cancer now and to be honest he sort of pissed me off. He's trying to be on the safe side and i get that, but at the same time i'm finally in a good place and i don't need him taking that away from me.

We agreed that i would get another scan to see if my endrometrial lining was still thick like it was a few months ago. I had the scan and it showed it was the same as it was before so my immediate reaction was excellent, it's not worse so that's fine. So i told him no thanks. Thanks for the call but i'll take the oncoloogists advise that i received a long time ago - dont go looking for trouble.

I spoke to my oncologist just a few days ago to let her know that he still wanted to do one and i asked what she thought and unfortunately she has told me that i actually should get it. Nothing like an oncologist to put things as 'this is how it is'. Basically i need to just get it done and see what the results are. If there are cancer cells, we have to deal with it (hysterectomy) but if i dont get it done and leave it, and there are cancer cells there then she wont be able to help me pretty much.

So that's where i'm up to at the moment. I'm just waiting for an appointment at the moment and it's just a curet so i don't care about the procedure at all, i know there's nothing to it (just going under again which i hate) but otherwise that part of it's fine and easy. It's the waiting for the results and the what if's that could come with it. I'm in such a good place at the moment - the best i've been in in about 2 years and i dont want to go backwards, only forwards.

Anyway once again i'm just doing what i'm told to do and will deal with it if i have to but this time at least i've got a very positive attitude that it wont be anything at all and that i shouldnt have to speak to my gyno again for a long time which will be nice!

Another thing that has happened since my last post was i got my nipples done. Considering this site was originally set up just so i could show everyone my photo's i'll post some on her next time so you can see. I havent got the tattoo's done just yet (too expensive) but i will as soon as we can afford it and that will finish them off nicely. I'm so glad i got them done because they really do top it all off and make them look more like normal boobs. Anyway will post some pictures soon.