Breast Cancer Awareness Month: how to manage the news

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Hazel Chu (0:40)

The Inside Track on Newstalk.

Ciara Kelly (0:44)

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I'm here to highlight just how important this is. We're joined now by Amy Nolan, CEO of ARC Cancer Support Centres, and Hazel Chu, who's the Green Party Dublin City Councilor and Deputy Leader of the Green Party. You're both very welcome to the programme. And Hazel, I was checking in with you because I spoke to you last year, not long after you'd had your own diagnosis of breast cancer and you had gone through your surgery and going through your treatment and you were feeling very positive, I suppose, about the future. But I know from speaking to other people and from friends and family who have been through this experience that actually the aftermath, you know, the 12 months post-surgery, post-treatment can be really, really difficult for people.

Hazel Chu (1:31)

It's really rough, Ciara. And I would not be one to say that, unusually, because I tend to go, okay, we'll just deal with this. But I have to say, it's been a lot rougher than the previous kind of period, when after the surgery, after the radiotherapy, and I was in radiotherapy for five weeks during Christmas of all times. And I still didn't find that as rough as currently. So I'm on a drug called Tamoxifen, and a lot of your listeners who would have had breast cancer or are going through breast cancer now would be familiar with it. And it is something, it is a type of drug that takes all the estrogen and progesterone out of you.

So it kicks you into menopause, but it also has other added symptoms. The upside is it reduces the risk of your cancer coming back, but the downside is you find yourself with a very different quality of life. And this is why having the likes of Amy and ARC has been so important. And having yourselves talk about this issue is so important, because I think people find it kind of taboo. Like I find it really weird talking about it still, because I always worry that people go, oh, it's her again talking about her cancer. But every time we find ourselves talking about this issue, you will, I will inevitably have people go, okay, I must go check now, or I must go look, talk to others about this. And it's a good conversation to have.

Ciara Kelly (3:03)

Which is something we really want to encourage. But I think in terms of the conversation around cancer, people have heard people talk about the diagnosis, they have heard people talk about the treatment, they've heard people talk about speaking to family, telling children and I don't think they hear enough about the aftermath and perhaps then they're a little bit unprepared for life after breast cancer.

Hazel Chu (3:25)

Absolutely and I was just talking to my oncology nurse the other day and she is an amazing woman, Sharon. And she had warned me for so long during the first part where we were assessing things.

She had advised me to talk to Oncoplastics to look at my options and me being me and like many other people in a situation where you're faced with surgery, your first immediate thought is, I just want this out of me. So I didn't think about the esthetics. I didn't think about the aftermath and that is really important because now I'm after radio so I can't have any more surgery for the foreseeable future and I find myself unable to really look at myself in the mirror as much anymore and that's not a woe is me story. That is just the reality that a lot of people who go through various cancers, especially breast cancers, find themselves in because suddenly I have had operation on both of my breasts so they are very different now and they don't feel like part of me. But with also the drugs of tamoxifen, not to scare your listeners off, you also don't feel like part of you. There is a part that is essentially taken away from you and you can't focus as much anymore, you can't act as quickly on things anymore, and that becomes quite debilitating. And it's not to say, listen, I'm useless, I'm not, but it is to say that it is a very different quality of life that people don't think about and don't talk about because they are constantly told, well, you're very lucky to have survived it or you're very lucky to be in this position. And this is why having organizations like ARC have been essential in providing a better quality of life for people during diagnosis and also after diagnosis as well.