Monday 16th September 2019, a day that will probably be etched onto my average memory for life.

My friend texted me the night before to see how I was feeling about getting the results and I said to her ‘it will go one of two ways. Relief and life will go back to normal, or shock and life will never be the same again’.

Our appointment was at 3.30pm so we made arrangements for our youngest to be collected from school under the ruse of a play date – no need to worry anyone just yet.

When it was our turn to be seen we were called into a room with the consultant and a nurse. He was a smartly dressed man in his mid to late fifties (at a guess) and he carried himself with confidence. He seemed quite chirpy when he sat down and then with no preamble said ‘We have your results Mrs Blackwood and we have detected cancer in both breasts’ – WHAM that was it, like a punch in the face from Tyson Fury! Life would never be the same again.

Dave and I both said afterwards ‘Christ they don’t sugar coat it do they’ but on reflection how can they? This is their job, they deal with it every day, they are experts in it and they do not have the time to pussy foot around. It isn’t the consultant’s job to hold your hand and offer tissues (the nurses are fantastic at that btw) it’s their job to impart information and decide which path your treatment is going to take.

We spent about 15 minutes (I think) in that room with him during which he explained my individual case. I have a different breast cancer in each breast – I never have done things by half! The one on the left is apparently quite a rare type Mucinous Carcinoma of the Breast it is a 10mm grade 1 tumour. The consultant got quite animated about this one and told me that in his 23 years as a consultant he had never known anyone have any further issues with this kind of breast cancer. Result! This is one piece of good news in a sea of shit.

The one in the right breast is a more common type a Ductal Carcinoma and the tumour is 15mm and a grade 2. Both cancers are invasive meaning they the cancer has ‘invaded’ or spread to the surrounding breast tissue. Not so good news.

The consultant left us, with our short-term future blown apart, and a nurse took us into another room. She spent what felt like an age going back through the type of cancer I had, possible treatments, next steps and answering any questions we had. She imparted a huge amount of information for us to process so much so I felt the need to take notes! She took time to find out lots about me and our family asking about hobbies (can’t imagine they’ll be top of my to do list for the next 12 months!) and the boys. One of her questions was ‘what is your support system like?’ to which Dave answered, ‘this is as good as it gets’. I can always rely on Dave and his dry sense of humour to lighten the mood – let’s hope this gets us through the next 12 months.

I did cry a couple of times during the whole consultation, the shock, fear and sheer bloody magnitude of what we were facing overwhelmed me.

As we walked out of the hospital trying to process the news, my overriding thought was ‘how will this affect Max and Joe?’