Jane Flemming 'The Battle I Have To Win'

A routine visit to the doctor turned into a nightmare for the courageous Olympian.

- Phillip Koch

Jane Flemming is renowned as one of our toughest ever athletes but her voice starts to crack and the tears flow when she reveals the torture she went through after a shock breast cancer diagnosis left her fighting for her life.

“Of course I was thinking the worst,” she admits. “I don’t know if I ever thought I was going to die, but I just thought the whole association of cancer... I don’t know what I was thinking. It was changing from one minute to another. I had a couple of horrendous meltdowns at night in the dark lying there thinking. I’ve never felt so afraid or vulnerable.”

Jane, 52, is still reeling after discovering almost by accident in May that she had a high-grade ductal carcinoma in her left breast, with surgeons eventually removing a 5cm tumour from her milk duct before a second operation to remove more cancer cells.

Her ordeal began earlier this year when she went to see her GP for a regular pap smear and complained about menopausal hot flushes keeping her awake at night. She was prescribed a low dose of estrogen and sent for a mammogram before starting it.

“They found three very, very tiny, almost microscopic pieces of white on the mammogram,” she says, explaining doctors told her it could be calcium deposits. It could also be an indication of breast cancer, but Jane says it never entered her mind she could actually have the disease given she had not one symptom or indicator.

On Monday, May 15, she had a biopsy and the specialist rang soon after to confirm the worst possible news – the results were positive for a form of breast cancer called DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ).