A 21^st is always a celebration, but I found myself celebrating it last month at 51 years of age – 21 years since I was first diagnosed with breast cancer.

Accompanying my 21^st celebration were the words every cancer survivor wants to hear from their oncologist; “this is goodbye, I hope to never see you again.”

When Professor Arlene Chan said these magical 10 words to me last month, I’m not sure what I felt the most – joy, disbelief, shock, fear – after all, I had heard them once before.

I’d first met Arlene back in 2001, a few weeks after my 31^st birthday and with my eight-week-old first born Drew in, my arms.

After finding a lump when I stopped breast feeding, and being reassured by all and sundry it would just be a blocked milk duct, I was diagnosed with the rarest of breast cancers, the triple-negative sort.

A lumpectomy was performed and a ‘new procedure’ used to see if it had moved to my lymph nodes. Joyous news upon awakening from surgery, it had not, and my lymph nodes were still intact. But sometimes new procedures need the kinks worked out and a week later, I was back in surgery getting the nodes removed as the cancer had travelled, they just hadn’t found it first time around.

After the surgery Arlene outlined a new breast cancer trial which theorised that giving triple-negative breast cancer patients aggressive chemotherapy would give them a better chance of survival.

I was all for this, especially as she also said at that time they knew very little about this cancer, but if I insisted on being given a statistic, then a 50/50 chance of being alive in 12 months was realistic.

I was terrified. I was a new mum, no family history of breast cancer and 31 years old.

What followed was so very hard, especially after already having two lots of surgery less than three months after giving birth.

I was told the chemotherapy would most likely push me into early menopause so my dreams of more children could only be kept alive by a quick trip to Hollywood Fertility Centre to store some embryos. This is its own traumatic journey, but nothing compared to what was to come.

Time for ‘the trial’ chemotherapy.

Let’s just say chemo has come a long way in the past 20 years. I was so sick I had to be given daily injections just to get my blood count high enough to have my next dose of chemo. Then it was straight into six weeks of daily radiotherapy.

And, of course, the treatment was a trial, so no one knew if it would work or not.

Sidenote – turns out it did work as I’ve been told that women with triple-negative breast cancer are now receiving this treatment. It still makes me very happy to have done my small part to help others wo have followed.

Looking back, I only got through this traumatic time with a newborn baby because of the love and support of those around me for which I will always be grateful.

When I finally emerged from the medical haze, I had to learn how to live with the constant fear of dying. The only way I could do this was to make sure I lived my best life.

A few months later, in my search for answers, I signed up for another trial with Arlene, this one was to try and find out why I had got this disease. It was exploring the role of genetics and breast cancer.

For me the answer was another negative, in fact I used to joke I had quadruple-negative breast cancer. Years later, with advances in science, I asked the question again, but the answer was still ‘no’ link to genetics.

Having exhausted all channels known at the time, I still wanted to know why this had happened to me. Arlene, out of answers by this stage, simply said “we’ll have to put it down to bad luck.”

Luck? What could I do to fight luck? Nothing. So, for a long time, never a day passed without me thinking it would come back and my luck would run out.

But I didn’t feel sorry for myself for too long. I changed my lifestyle, I changed my attitude, I changed everything I could to say no to luck and take some sense of control back over my life.

Then, after nearly four years of menopause, I got my period back, and considering my breast cancer wasn’t hormone-related, convinced Arlene to support me to try and fall pregnant.

And I did. My miracle baby girl Amber was born nearly six years after my son.

Life was good. Cancer had taught me it could be short, so I kept living my best life possible.

Then, some 16 years after it first reared its ugly head, in 2017 cancer decided to visit me again.

Not the same cancer metastasising, no, a completely different type of breast cancer, this time HER2+, completely unrelated to the first.

The following two years saw me undergo a mastectomy, reconstruction and more chemotherapy, this time at 46 years of age.  My kids were older, my son 15 and my daughter nine years old, but in a way that made it harder. They understood more. Asked more questions. Felt the fear of losing their Mum more acutely.

Me, I felt a lot of anger; I’d done my dues and it didn’t seem fair to have to do it again. But as many people reading this will know, life can be bloody unfair.

Was it easier the second time? No. Once again all I could think of was death and missing out on life, my kid’s life, the future I’d already fought so hard for.

But, as I moved towards finishing all of my treatment, cancer wasn’t quite done with me yet.

A jaw infection and subsequent MRI revealed a lump on my thyroid. It actually was just a coincidence that the scan went that far down, but sure enough, there was a chance I had thyroid cancer.

All tests to diagnose failed so I was told they’d have to take half or all of the thyroid (which BTW for those who don’t know, looks like a butterfly – the things you learn on your cancer journey) out to be certain if it was cancer or not.

Problem was, both ‘wings of my butterfly’ had suspicious lumps. I was given three options; take one side, take the other, or take the lot.

I’d just gone through four lots of surgery and all the chemo for the breast cancer so I was over general anaesthetics, hospitals and doctors. I was so sick of being sick I just told them to take the whole thing, anything to avoid more surgery afterwards. Lucky I did, as it turns out the thyroid cancer was on both sides.

So, some four years later here I am. I’ve survived three different types of cancer but unfortunately my marriage of 25-plus years didn’t survive all the grief, fear and hardship.

I not only survived, but three days after Arlene told me she never wanted to see me again, I celebrated another 21^st milestone; this time it was my son Drew’s 21^st birthday party.

There I stood, proudly next to that baby boy I thought I’d never see grow, with my daughter I never thought I could have, standing smiling on my other side.

Lucky? Yes, very much so. Over the past 21 years I have seen friends get diagnosed and some succumb to this disease so despite my hurdles, I realise I’m one of the lucky ones after all.

For those of you currently travelling this bumpy and scary road, keep fighting, keep looking cancer in the eye and saying ‘no, it’s not my time.’ Don’t let it win my friends, don’t let it win.

Lisa’s story is featured in BCRC-WA’s Summer 2022/23 Newsletter.