A woman who ‘jumped through all the hoops’ hoping her life would be saved through treatment will still die from an horrific illness. The 42-year-old’s breast cancer spread to her lungs, liver and bones and is incurable – she says she hopes that with more research and funding fewer lives are taken by the “exploitative” disease.
Emma Robertson, 42, a freelancer who lives on a narrowboat in London with her husband Mike, 42, a brewer and musician, started considering having a family towards the end of 2012. However in early 2013, she discovered she had an “achy” lump in her right breast and, after multiple scans and a biopsy, she was informed she had breast cancer.
Since chemotherapy can affect fertility, the couple started the IVF process and successfully froze three embryos, which they named Wynken, Blynken, and Nod after the children’s poem. However, after then undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and a single mastectomy, Emma was told the cancer had metastasised – spread – to her lungs, liver and bones and is incurable.
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Given she thought she may not survive the year, or even five years post-diagnosis, Emma said she had to “accept” that she could not have children. But her dreams of having a family were nevertheless crushed. “I so desperately wanted to have children but this was all over for me,” Emma told PA Real Life.
“How can you have kids when you’re living with an incurable illness that’s really unlikely to allow you to live for five years?”
Emma has since married her husband Mike, as she said “life doesn’t stop just because you’re diagnosed with a horrible, incurable illness”, and feels “lucky” to be alive today. However, her biggest hope is that, with more research and funding, those living with secondary or metastatic breast cancer can live longer lives and have more treatment options.
“I don’t feel hopeful that I am going to somehow miraculously survive this disease, that isn’t the way it works,” Emma said. “Nobody gets out alive, metastatic breast cancer kills.
“Unfortunately, my breast cancer did escape and move around, and there isn’t a way to put it back in its box.”
Prior to her “whirlwind” breast cancer diagnosis, Emma and her husband Mike had started to discuss the option of starting a family. She said she knew Mike would be an amazing father and she “wanted to share that with him”.
However, her world was “turned upside down” when doctors discovered a “malignant” tumour in her right breast and she was given her primary breast cancer diagnosis.
“It just felt like everything was catastrophic. Everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong, all at the same time,” she said. Emma started the IVF process, freezing three successful embryos before undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and multiple surgeries, including a single mastectomy.
She was then prescribed a hormone therapy drug called Tamoxifen and told she would most likely need to take this for five years. She said she experienced hair loss, nausea, and fatigue as a result of the treatments, and likened the side effects to having “a really bad hangover”.
At the time, Emma believed she would be “cured” and therefore tried to view her cancer journey as a temporary “adventure” – but she then received her “horrifying” secondary diagnosis. “It was challenging, but I thought I was going to be cured,” she said.
“I jumped through all of the hoops for nine months, thinking that I was giving myself the best possible chance of going back to ‘normal’, whatever normal was. I thought I was young enough and positive enough to feel like, after five years, I could just get over it, but I didn’t get that chance.”
In early 2015, a routine appointment led to the discovery that the cancer had spread to Emma’s lungs, liver and bones, meaning it was treatable but incurable. She said it felt like a “death sentence” and the option to have children was “taken out of (her) hands”.
“I just felt like we can’t be worrying about that, too,” she explained. “I can’t be yearning for babies and mourning a life I can’t have. I really just need to accept what I’ve been given.”
Emma was prescribed an oral chemotherapy drug called Capecitabine, which made her hands and feet “very sore”, adding that it felt like she was “walking around on hot coals”. She said she stopped taking this medication as the cancer had progressed, and was then given Paclitaxel before taking Letrozole.
This led to Emma campaigning for those with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer to have access to the drug Palbociclib. Previously, Palbociclib had been rejected by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) because costs were too high, but it has since been approved for routine use by the NHS in England for patients with advanced breast cancer after price deals were agreed.
Emma said she feels “incredibly lucky” to be taking this drug to this day as third-line therapy through Pfizer’s free trial, as Palbociclib is recommended as an option for treating previously untreated metastatic breast cancer, meaning she would not be eligible for it. She believes she “might possibly not be alive” today without it.
Although Emma said there is “no hope with this disease”, she wants to help raise more awareness of secondary breast cancer so that others know they are not alone. She also believes “no drug should ever cost a life” and, working with the charity Breast Cancer Now, she hopes further research and funding will help create more treatment options.
She said: “There is no hope with this disease, there’s no cure for it… I will get to the end of the road where they say, ‘Actually, there is nothing else that we can do’. “I’ve had metastatic breast cancer for years now, and the number of women who I’ve met who are no longer with us, I think it’s hard to live with that.
“But it’s the research, isn’t it? It’s really about why cancer metastasises and what can be done to identify that risk and pre-empt and prevent it. Metastatic breast cancer is exploitative, it looks for the cracks and creeps in through them, so in terms of treatments, we need professionals who are going to think outside the box.”
Emma is part of a new film created by the research and support charity Breast Cancer Now, called Stories Of Secondary, which features nine women talking candidly about living with secondary breast cancer.
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
