On December 5th, I went into the hospital for my prophylactic bi-lateral pre-pectoral mastectomy. Initially, the morning was calm and I had butterflies in my stomach, but that all changed rather quickly. Without going into the exact details, the hour before my surgery was one of the most stressful situations I’ve been in and was more than a little traumatising, to be honest.

But then I woke up as though it were all just a really bad dream. And thus began the final stage of this journey: the recovery.

Beginning my care at the MidWest Breast Clinic in Limerick felt like I was finally making a huge step on my screening journey. Once you make your way through the maze of a hospital to the 4th floor of the Leben Building, you’re greeted to a waiting room with lavender walls with pink and purple blown glass light fixtures and you take comfort in being away from the otherwise chaotic parts of the hospital.

The first time I went to the breast specialist, they found a lump. In all honesty, despite being told the importance of self-screening, I hadn’t known how to correctly do it and ironically, my fear of finding anything kept me from checking. This was my first routine check-up and I was quickly sent for a mammogram and ultrasound to try and get a better idea of what the lump was.

It was August 8, 2018. I was somewhere in Galicia on a quick holiday with my then boyfriend when I got the phone call that I had tested positive for a BRCA2 mutation. Within an instant, I found myself aware of a new level of anxiety and fear and all I could do was cry. I was 26.