When one battle ended ANOTHER BEGAN

After her own fight with cancer, Tracey Horsburgh’s husband received a diagnosis of his own

- DONNA SMILEY

As a chronic worrier, I’d always assumed if something terrible happened in my life, I’d be the one crying in the corner, unable to cope with it all. But when my doctor uttered the words ‘breast cancer’, my initial reaction was, ‘Screw it, you’re not having me!’

As a mum to two young children, who were everything to me and my husband Matt, I was determined not to leave them without a mother.

I was 40 when I found a lump on the underside of my right breast while doing my regular breast checks in February 2015. My GP thought that as I had no family history of breast cancer and at my young age, it was probably a cyst and would disappear with my next period.

However, I couldn’t shake the feeling it was more serious than that, so I went back to my GP who referred me to a breast clinic where I had a mammogram, ultrasound and a biopsy.

Ten days later, I was told I had stage two oestrogen-fuelled breast cancer, known as ER-positive breast cancer. ‘I just want to see my girls grow up,’ was all I can recall saying.

Luckily, the cancer had been caught early and hadn’t spread. My daughter Charlotte, then seven, and her sister Isabelle, four, were too young to understand what was happening, so, with Matt’s help, I told them Mummy had a poorly breast which the doctors were going to take away.