“If you break your leg, ‘I’m in pain, I need fixing’. I never actually felt ill. I never felt a lump, nothing. I was picked up very quickly.”
But Caroline Bentham was ill. She was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer earlier this year after a routine mammogram detected some ‘areas of concern’.
Following an operation and a course of radiotherapy, the 51-year-old married mother of three children is once again a healthy person, but she agreed to discuss her experience as a breast cancer patient to support a campaign to raise £200,000 to buy state-of-the art equipment that will revolutionise the treatment of breast cancer in West Herts.
The Herts Advertiser and its sister title, the Watford Observer, are backing West Herts Hospitals’ Charity’s appeal to raise the money to buy two Savi Scout surgical guidance systems, which use radar technology to precisely target and remove cancerous tissue.
To find out more about the appeal and donate, visit https://raisewestherts.org.uk/appeals/beatcancer/
Caroline, who admitted she had “absolutely no inclination” anything was amiss when she went for her mammogram appointment, was one of the first patients to benefit from the use of the Scout when West Herts Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was using it on a trial basis at the breast unit at St Albans City Hospital.
Something was wrong though, and when Caroline was told she had breast cancer she admitted: “I cried… a lot.
“Nobody could believe it. I walk my dog for two hours a day, I used to go running, I’m really fit and healthy and barely ever get a cold. It was a real, real shock.”
Caroline, who lives in Chorleywood, admitted it took “probably quite a while” for the impact of her diagnosis to sink in.
“My Dad has had prostate cancer, he’s had a brain tumour removed and he still has skin cancer so I’ve been through it as a relative, waiting for information, so to then go through it yourself - and he’s still going through it with his skin cancer at the same time - is really bizarre,” she explained. “I should be looking after my Dad, not him worrying about me.
“My kids were doing their A levels. As a mum, your kids always come first so I was ‘just forget about this, this isn’t happening, the kids have got their A levels’. One had applied to Cambridge, one had applied to vets school, so it was a massive time for them.
“I don’t need time for me now, I need to be there for the kids. I tried to forget about it if I’m honest.”
Following her diagnosis, Caroline’s treatment began “very, very quickly” and her operation took place on May 2.
“The NHS get a lot of bad press but for this I could not fault anything,” she said. “Once I got out of Edgware Hospital, St Albans, Watford and Mount Vernon have all been amazing. You couldn’t have asked for better people. The Macmillan nurses, the consultants, everyone that I’ve seen has been wonderful all the way through.
“I’ve now been released back into the community as a healthy person. I’ve got a mammogram in the spring but I’ve been advised that I’m as likely to get it a second time as anybody else is a first time.
“I think the biggest issue for women my age is I had to stop HRT. You spend five years being told ‘take HRT or you’ll get osteoporosis, you’ll get this wrong and that wrong and you’ll get hot flushes’ and then suddenly you get told ‘you’ve got to stop it or the cancer could come back’ because it was a hormone receptive cancer.
“Putting the hormones back inside it will encourage it to come back and that’s just one of those things you have to accept.”
Asked how she reflects on the experience, Caroline said: “It’s really bizarre. I’m a very positive person and I still can’t quite believe it’s happened to me if I’m honest.
“I went to get a prescription this week and I was like ‘yeah, I’ve got my little prescription exemption card because I’m officially ill’. But I’m not ill! It’s just so bizarre.
“You see some of the people in Mount Vernon and the waiting room at St Albans, there will be ones at Mount Vernon who have got little head scarves on because they’ve had chemo and they’ve got no hair and I’m striding around the hospital…I shouldn’t be here!
“Maybe that’s part of my way of coping with it, it’s like, yes, just move on.”
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