Sara Monaghan is terrified of dying of cancer, leaving her two young children without a mother.
Sara Monaghan is terrified of dying of cancer and leaving her two young children without a mother.
The 39-year-old Sydney woman has had net scans for two and a half years, but she’s quietly clinging to the fear of cancer recurrence and can’t stand it.
Speaking to FEMAIL, Sara admitted that she kept her bold face when she was diagnosed with hormone-positive breast cancer.
The duo’s cancer journey began when she felt a lump in her lower left breast in the shower just before Christmas in 2019.
She initially thought it was nothing, but decided to ask her doctor “just in case” during a checkup in February.
The doctor was “not worried” but sent him for an ultrasound “just to be sure”.
As soon as the image appeared on the screen, Sara realized that something was “seriously wrong”.
“When I had the ultrasound I could see a mass, usually I can’t identify anything on the ultrasound,” he said.
“The technician then told me to get a biopsy to check, he looked me in the eye and told me not to leave it for too long.
The mother of two tried to make a brave face for her family despite having to endure 12 months of tough care.
She secretly believed that cancer would kill her, take away from her husband and children.
“I burst into tears and called my husband.”
The following Monday, Sara had her biopsy, and her fears were confirmed two days later when her doctor called her to her office “on time”.
The next few weeks passed as Sara faced many waves of decisions, from whether she wanted to get both breasts, what type of implant she preferred, and whether she wanted doctors to have her nipples removed.
“This was at a time when some implants were pulled from the market because they were associated with different types of cancer,” he said.
“So I have so much information and no time to digest it.”
He also had to choose between chemical and medical menopause and sign off on technical treatment options.
When the initial decision phase was completed, Sara began 12 months of brutal treatment. She said radiotherapy was “a walk in the park” compared to chemotherapy.
“When you start, they say everyone responds differently to each treatment. “You can be a marathon runner who can do nothing all of a sudden, or a 65-year-old marathon runner feeling good,” he said.
Sara fell somewhere in the middle.
“I remember going to school three days after my first chemotherapy session to pick up my kids and having a hard time picking them up,” she said.
He felt weak, tired, and as if he had no control over anything in his life, including his own body.
“I’m a control freak, it was mentally tough for me to just let things flow,” he said.
That’s when she met a breast cancer nurse who “changed everything.”
“He was the first to say that I can control how I feel by exercising.”
Sara explains it’s hard to give up “control of everything” after her diagnosis
While Sara managed to keep her fatigue and mental health under control by staying active, some of her friends joked that she looked too beautiful to be treated for cancer.
“I was kidding, I had the ‘chemo glow,'” he said.
“Looking back, I realize how bad of a person I was.”
Sara received a 10-year survival rate from her doctors, one of the best possible outcomes for women with her own type of cancer.
“Even if you have a 99% chance of academic survival, that 1% you missed goes through your head,” he said.
“We’re losing women to this disease every day, nine women a day, so we feel like we’re not in control.
Despite the lingering fear, Sara tries to stay positive.
Sara says she will take care of the rest of her life but as long as life is long she is happy.
“It’s a lottery, sometimes women like me get lucky in stage three and the cancer never comes back,” she said.
Although she knows things will never “go back to normal”, her life is no longer focused on cancer.
“I would wake up and think, ‘Oh that’s right, I have cancer,'” she said.
“I now wake up when the alarm goes off and I hope my kids aren’t awake yet so I can spend a few more minutes undisturbed,” she laughed.
Sara’s treatment changed the way she lived her daily life.
Sara says she feels like she’s turning 10 12 months after she got cancer
“I feel like I’m 10 years old,” she said.
“I now also have post-menopausal skin, so I take better care of it than before.”
Sara now speaks publicly about her battle with a life-threatening illness and how she chose to live her life with extra kindness, love and passion.
He will get “some sort of cure” for the rest of his life, but as long as he has “longevity” it doesn’t matter.
She recently spoke at an event for GHD and the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
ghd raises funds in partnership with the National Breast Cancer Foundation
In partnership with the National Breast Cancer Foundation of Australia (NBCF), ghd celebrates the launch of the 2022 Limited Edition Pink Collection and 18 years of partnership with breast cancer charities around the world, raising over $22 million for the cause.
This year, ghd will continue to support by donating $20 from each Pink Limited Edition purchase to the National Breast Cancer Foundation in Australia.
Source: Daily Mail
