Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/85232
128: yourjourneys Iam not alone WORDS BY: Dawn Yore You could say I'm a woman who sticks at things for the long haul. With a one month old baby girl and a 14 month old son, we moved into a brand new house in New Windsor, Auckland. Fifty years and three children later we're still here! I am 73 years old and I work two days a week in the HR department at Post Haste Head Office in Penrose… a job I have enjoyed for 16 years. Prior to that, it was 17 years with BASF, a German chemical importing company. I enjoy working, the people I work with and the sense of a job well done when I leave at the end of the day. 1997 was the happiest and worst year of my life. In October, I became a Grandma for a second time to a beautiful baby girl and a month later at the end of November at aged 58 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I'd been having mammograms every two years but in the early hours one morning, I woke with my hand on a lump. I got such a fright and I tried to tell myself it must be a muscle. The next morning I was at the doctor's surgery before it opened. Very quickly that day I was booked into the breast cancer clinic where I underwent a biopsy and the following day I went back for the results. It was breast cancer – I will never forget those words! After that I can't remember much else except the words chemo and radiation. Ten days later in early December, I had a partial mastectomy of the left breast. At the same time, a long incision was made under my arm and a handful of lymph nodes removed – 12 in total, five of which were cancerous. Nowadays, a dye is run through and only the cancerous nodes removed. My specialist visited the hospital the day after the op to explain my follow-up treatment; chemotherapy and radiation. That was almost as bad as being told I had breast cancer