'Raising my son was the priority'

People often ask if I developed my carefree hell-for-leather attitude to life after having cancer and I tell them, no, I was always like that! My parents used to continually enquire, ‘Do you and your brother ever say no to anything?’ We’d always loved dancing and live music, never wanting to miss out on any fun, and I’m still the same now.

Would I get to see my son grow up?

I was first diagnosed with cancer six months after giving birth to my son, now aged 28. I was a single parent, so this felt particularly terrifying. I instantly presumed I was going to die and leave him without anyone in the world. I remember wailing to the rather dismissive doctor who informed me I had cervical cancer, that I’d just had a baby and couldn’t die. She coldly went on to say, ‘You probably won’t die, but be aware you won’t be able to have any more children.’ So, two pieces of devastating news in one day...

My miracle baby

Following surgery, a rather more empathetic consultant told me he was confident I would survive this. However, he just couldn’t understand how I’d been able to have a baby. The tumour was so large by this point that it had to have been growing since before I was pregnant, but if it had, I should have haemorrhaged during the birth with serious complications for my son and I. ‘You really have got a miracle baby!’ he told me.

I underwent a course of radiotherapy, managing only with the help of my brilliant childminder and some friends who threw a party to raise money so I could pay my mortgage. My priority became looking after my little boy and fun took a back seat. Each milestone I passed whilst raising my son felt incredible. My focus was on living long enough to see his first day at school, then to help him through his teenage years, but of course I longed to see him grow into a man.

Here we go again...

And I almost managed all those milestones, but then in 2013, distracted by my poor mum’s struggle for seven years with Alzheimer’s and subsequent passing, I’d failed to deal with a lump in my left breast and when I eventually made it to my GP, the look on her face told me everything I needed to know. Obviously she referred me to hospital for further investigation, but I think I already knew it would be bad news. Following the diagnosis, I had a left-side mastectomy, six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by radiotherapy.

My poor son was 15 at this point and sitting his GCSE’s. It was such a terrible time for him, he would literally visit me in hospital then go back to school and sit an exam. He obviously found the whole experience terrifying and, although we have an incredibly close relationship, we found ourselves unable to communicate. I had no energy left for anything but fighting my way through chemotherapy. I was seriously ill with neutropenic sepsis several times, which involved him ringing an ambulance after finding me collapsed on the bathroom floor. Luckily, he had a steady girlfriend to lean on during this time, but my illness must have put unbearable pressure on the two of them.

Friends are everything

My friend Jen was an absolute rock, attending all of my hospital appointments and even coming to my house every morning for weeks to inject me in the stomach as I had developed a terrible needle phobia after all the catheterisations. After treatment finished I decided to celebrate with her and six other close girlfriends in a rockstar villa in Ibiza, chucking my prosthetic around the pool for a laugh and naming it Keith (after the Rolling Stone). I then went back to my job as an Art Director on a women’s magazine. The company had behaved impeccably, allowing me as much time off as I needed – due to complications this became almost a year.

Here we go again...again!

And then, two years later, after a mammogram on my remaining breast, I was told I had developed a completely different cancer, HER2-positive, on my other side and would need another mastectomy. I was reeling from the shock of this third diagnosis, although thankfully none of the tumours were secondary. Chemotherapy began again, but my body was unable to withstand its horrors. My veins had all collapsed, so I had a picc line fitted in my arm which immediately gave me a blood clot, and the portacath installed after that failed to work. I needed the dreaded stomach injections again but couldn’t ask my beloved friend to do them a second time, so had to overcome my phobia and do them myself. I still have no idea how I managed to do it! After all that I then developed peripheral neuropathy in my feet and the decision was made to stop treatment. This was terrifying as, terrible though it made me feel, I believed chemo was the one thing keeping me alive.

The return of hedonism

I knew if I survived this third bout with the big C, that I was going to live whatever life I had left at full pelt. I just wanted to get back to the life I had before, a life I’d always loved. I desperately wanted to see more of the world, so when the opportunity arose, I packed in my job and went off around the world with a friend. We saw the whole of Central and South America, then Bali, ending our trip in Sri Lanka. I also knew I wanted to have a go at writing a book, so I enrolled on a Creative Writing course at Curtis Brown and wrote two novels. I now work for Mission Remission, curating their website, editing other stories like these, and I couldn’t be happier.

I’m still raving and misbehaving, going to festivals and live gigs most weekends, living it up in Ibiza a couple of times a year. I love my life, my boy, and my friends. My son still lives with me, and we get along fine (most of the time!) He is slowly addressing the trauma he experienced during my illness although I don’t think the fear of losing me will ever leave him...

Susanna lives in North London with her son, Alfie. They are both obsessive Arsenal supporters. She enjoys live music, across a variety of genres, festivals, and dancing. She has been an avid reader since a child, but also loves a bit of telly! She has been learning Spanish for a year, after promising her lovely uncle who, until his passing, lived in Ibiza. After treatment, she started doing yoga and daily meditation, both of which she considers have definitely helped her to feel calmer.