As We Decorated The Tree...I Told My Kids I Had Cancer

Emily Lunn tells why she told her children about her illness at Christmas

- Kara O'neill

Putting the first bauble on the tree is the moment when, for me, Christmas really begins. Decorating the house with my husband Greg, 55, and our sons, Billy, 10, and Jamie, eight, and seeing the joy on their faces means more than anything. Since the boys were born, I’ve always wanted to make their Christmas as magical as possible. But, of course, cancer doesn’t care what time of year it is when it decides to strike a family.

When I first noticed one of my nipples was leaking discharge in April 2016, I wasn’t worried. I’d experienced a number of harmless lumps and cysts while I was breastfeeding, and even though my kids were way past that stage, since then I always kept an eye on my boobs. After a quick inspection, I couldn’t feel anything unusual and the leaking stopped 24 hours later. Only by July, I could tell the tissue in that same breast felt thicker, and harder somehow. By October 2016, when I started a university course in sociology, it was still bothering me.