‘I found out I had breast cancer with my newborn son beside me – I feared I wouldn’t be here to see him start school’

A mum who was diagnosed with breast cancer with her five-month-old son in a pram beside her enjoyed 15 years cancer-free before learning the cancer had returned and is incurable – though she says the support of a community of secondary cancer patients has been life-changing.

Fiona Macrae, a travel insurance broker who lives in London with her husband Elliot Lane, first noticed changes in her left breast in 2004, when she was pregnant with her son Cameron. After Cameron was born, she said the changes in breast texture were still present, but she was told by doctors that it was likely due to milk production.

However, on one trip to her GP she saw a doctor who referred her to St Bartholomew’s Hospital’s one-stop breast clinic, as he thought it was sensible to get a more specialist opinion. Despite arriving at her appointment thinking “it will be fine, it will be nothing”, Fiona was diagnosed with breast cancer that day, in February 2005, with Cameron right beside her in his pram.

Fiona told PA Real Life: “I remember looking at him and thinking: ‘God, am I ever going to see my baby go to school?’

“It was completely shocking. The connotation of cancer is death… Immediately you think: ‘Well, that’s it. I’m never going to see my baby go to school, or anything like that’.”

Fiona had chemotherapy for six months from February to July 2005, before having a mastectomy of her left breast in October 2005, followed by radiotherapy from December that year.

She describes going through cancer treatment as a “lonely, lonely time” – at her appointments she was surrounded by patients much older than she was, and despite their love and support, her friends and other mothers her age could not relate to what she was going through.

Fiona said she was “really frightened” – “and then obviously the baby hormones are going mad as well at the same time, so none of that was helpful!”, she added.

Fiona finished her treatment in December 2005 and for 15 years there was no sign of the disease returning.

In the intervening years, she has seen her son Cameron succeed at school and go on to university, and is looking forward to watching him graduate next summer. She has also grown her career by setting up her own travel insurance brand that specialises in people with cancer, inspired by her own journey.

Over the years, she had regular check-up appointments and scans to ensure the disease had not returned, and took hormone therapy for a decade, thinking that “everything was fine”.

In 2020, however, she developed a cough that “wouldn’t go away” and said that “at the back of your mind, you’re always worried it’s going to be secondary breast cancer”.

“I was sent for a chest X-ray and that all came back clear,” Fiona said.

“And then I ended up seeing a respiratory consultant, and it was through the scans and tests that they discovered that it was metastatic breast cancer in my lungs, and it was also in my bones.”

Fiona said that she was “shocked” to receive this secondary diagnosis in July 2020 as she had “always thought I’d got away with it”.

“Once you hit that 15 years, you think: ‘I might be okay now’,” she said.

“So it was a shock … the stats online and everything are really bleak with life expectancy and everything like that.”

Fiona began immunotherapy treatment in August 2020 to stop the cancer from growing and three-monthly checks since show that the treatment is working.

While in 2004 she dealt with the loneliness of being a new parent while battling cancer, unsure of her prognosis and without people around her who could truly relate to what she was going through, her 2020 diagnosis was in the middle of a lockdown during the Covid pandemic, which brought a new type of isolation alongside her terror at being told her cancer was now incurable.

However, there was one major difference between Fiona’s diagnosis in 2004 to her secondary diagnosis in 2020 – the amount of support on offer to patients and their families has blossomed.

Fiona found a lifeline in Future Dreams, which provides practical and emotional support for people affected by breast cancer, including opportunities to connect with others going through similar experiences, as well as helping to fund vital secondary breast cancer research and promote breast health awareness.

The charity, founded in 2008 by mother and daughter Sylvie Henry and Danielle Leslie, who lost their lives to secondary breast cancer within a year of each other in 2009, offers in-person and online communities, workshops, classes and therapies as well as social and wellbeing events like exercise classes.

“My life just changed completely,” Fiona said of discovering the charity via Instagram in 2021.

“I was finally able to meet people in the same boat as me, the same age as me, going through the same things as me.”

“We always say it’s the worst club to be in with the best people,” she joked.

“I’ve met amazing people, they’re amazing friends in my life now … it’s just a shame it took for us all to get cancer to meet each other.”

Having this support available has made an “immense” difference to Fiona, who is grateful for a place where she can “talk about my darkest fears” with people who understand.

“It is even more scary this time because it’s not curable at all now,” she said.

“But to be able to talk about your fears to other people, and also the experts that they have at Future Dreams – the breast care nurses, people that can help you with the grief of your diagnosis, because you do grieve.

“You grieve for the life that you thought you might have.”

Six years on from her secondary breast cancer diagnosis, Fiona is still receiving immunotherapy, her first-line treatment, with scans every three months to check whether the cancer is growing.

When, inevitably, this treatment stops working, she will be moved onto a different treatment, helping to prolong her life as much as possible.

Cameron will graduate from university in summer 2027 and Fiona hopes she will be around to celebrate many more milestones with her family.

“I just want to make sure that I can see as much of Cameron’s life as possible,” she said.

“We encourage him to fly the nest – he wants to travel when he finishes uni. Although I’ll miss him when he goes, it’ll be our excuse to follow him around the world!

“Then there’ll be something else. Can I see him buy his first house, or something like that?

“I didn’t dare dream about this 22 years ago.”