“I Survived Chemo — and Then I Ran Nearly 30 Miles”

Cross­ing the fin­ish line of my ultra­ma­rathon, tears imme­di­ate­ly began to fall.

For the past sev­en hours, I’d bat­tled tor­ren­tial rain and wind, grap­pled with 6,000ft ter­rains and pushed through exhaus­tion.

Because six weeks ear­li­er, I’d fin­ished treat­ment for stage 3 breast can­cer, and bet­ter yet, I’m now in com­plete remis­sion. 

I found the lump ear­ly – specif­i­cal­ly, while in the super­mar­ket on a Sun­day in Octo­ber 2024 – when I just hap­pened to brush my breast and acci­den­tal­ly knocked the hard pea-sized lump. 

Imme­di­ate­ly, I froze in the queue with fear. ‘That’s nev­er been there before,’ I thought to myself and booked an urgent appoint­ment at my local GP for the next morn­ing.

To my relief, my doc­tor thought it was just a fat­ty lump, but referred me for my first ever mam­mo­gram just to be safe. I thought it would be a waste of time.  

That same day, I had two mam­mo­grams and a biop­sy. The day after that, I had a fur­ther 15 biop­sies.

Still, I sat in the wait­ing room expect­ing all would be well. And when I saw three doc­tors enter a near­by room, I assumed some­one else was going to get bad news.

Then they called my name.

I was told that my cells looked ‘sus­pi­cious in nature’ and that my offi­cial results would be ready in a fort­night – that’s a long time to wait when you’re ter­ri­fied of the out­come

Sure enough, in mid-Novem­ber, the results and my doc­tor con­firmed it: I had stage 3 HER2-pos­i­tive breast can­cer

This type of breast can­cer means that the can­cer cells make too much of a pro­tein called HER2, which enables can­cer cells to grow and spread more rapid­ly. In my case, the can­cer had already spread from my breast to near­by lymph nodes. 

For a moment I sim­ply sat in dis­be­lief.

I would need chemother­a­py first to shrink the size of the tumour and then a mas­tec­to­my fol­lowed by radio­ther­a­py. This was real, and it was hap­pen­ing to me.

I didn’t tell my two chil­dren the news at first: I’d got the results just before my son’s six­teenth birth­day and I want­ed him to enjoy his par­ty.

Even­tu­al­ly though, after about a week of try­ing to act nor­mal­ly, I sat them down with their dad and began one of the hard­est con­ver­sa­tions I’ve ever had.

‘I’ve got breast can­cer,’ I told them plain­ly. My daugh­ter got upset but my son didn’t say any­thing, which was equal­ly wor­ry­ing. I quick­ly added that ‘doc­tors are cer­tain that I’ll sur­vive this.’

How­ev­er, even I hadn’t absorbed how poten­tial­ly seri­ous this was – I was very naive about the treat­ment I was about to receive and was focused on try­ing to remain pos­i­tive.

On 18 Decem­ber 2024 I start­ed my six rounds of chemother­a­py. I com­plete­ly lost my voice at one point and every­thing tast­ed like bat­tery acid – both of which are com­mon side effects for chemo patients. I couldn’t even eat the choco­lates peo­ple had bought me, and I swapped my Christ­mas din­ner for ice lol­lies

Strange­ly though, I found those days of hav­ing chemother­a­py actu­al­ly enjoy­able. I was sur­round­ed by love­ly nurs­es and oth­er can­cer patients going through the same thing and we’d all just sit and chat.

The only thing that upset me was see­ing how scared my chil­dren were. 

One day, I gave my son a big hug and asked if he want­ed to talk about it, and he just asked me if I was going to die. I told him I had to get sick to get bet­ter but that I would get bet­ter

I think the thing that real­ly helped put both mine and the children’s minds at ease though was see­ing me keep fair­ly active between chemo rounds.

Although it some­times felt like I was run­ning through quick­sand when I was walk­ing the dog or com­plet­ing some slow, short trail runs, I would feel strong and pos­i­tive. And the clos­er I got to the end of chemo, the more resilient I became.

In April 2025, I was told I’d had a patho­log­ic com­plete response (pCR) to the chemo – no can­cer­ous cells showed up on the MRI, the inva­sive breast can­cer was gone.

Even though I had more treat­ment to go, I was so relieved. I’d always wor­ried it might spread fur­ther, but this result gave me a fight­ing chance.

My mas­tec­to­my fol­lowed in May 2025. I lost one breast, but not my pos­i­tive atti­tude

The day after I came home I went for a short walk. Two weeks after that, I went for a gen­tle run and grad­u­al­ly increased my dis­tance. By the time I start­ed radio­ther­a­py in July 2025, I’d set myself a chal­lenge to run after every treat­ment.

The first mile or two was always hard work – radio­ther­a­py doesn’t affect your immune sys­tem the way chemo does, but it does make you tired – and some­times I’d cry, but I’d always push through. Ulti­mate­ly, I always fin­ished hap­py, feel­ing grate­ful for the beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings.

After the 15th and final round of radio­ther­a­py, I decid­ed to organ­ise an ultra­ma­rathon in the Peak Dis­trict, to raise mon­ey for Can­cer Research.

While it was most­ly for me – I want­ed to get my life back on track and prove I could do it – I also want­ed my chil­dren to see that, even after some­thing so chal­leng­ing, you can come back stronger. 

Despite the stormy weath­er, over 15 peo­ple turned out to sup­port me, I had a blast and raised £4,000 for Can­cer Research. 

The past year has been incred­i­bly hard, emo­tion­al and unpre­dictable. I nev­er thought can­cer would hap­pen to me, but if I’ve learned any­thing, it’s that ear­ly detec­tion can save lives.

My doc­tor told me that if I’d found the lump just six months lat­er, we might have been look­ing at sec­ondary can­cer and my sto­ry could have had a very dif­fer­ent end­ing. 

Instead, despite some fatigue from ongo­ing can­cer and hor­mone treat­ment, my health is get­ting stronger every day and I’m able to look to the future.