There I was lying on a trolley having a breast biopsy carried out when I realised that the nurses were being extra nice to me. Now don’t get me wrong I was grateful for their care, especially as I was feeling pretty vulnerable in this bare breasted scenario, but something felt off. Their manner had changed from being the regular, professionally nice way that they deal with the constant stream of patients, to being more compassionate and talking in a more gentle, cooing way. They knew something! And at that moment, I did too. That lump in my breast was not some innocent cyst. And when the consultant confirmed it, there was no hiding from the fact, I had cancer!
I already knew that I had a BRCA2 mutation so I had an increased risk of developing breast cancer compared to women without the mutation, but I had only found out about this a month prior and was still letting that sink in. Being told I had a BRCA2 mutation and breast cancer in a short space of time was a double whammy that I had to get my head around.