A mum and daughter who went through breast cancer treatment at the same time are urging others to do their checks and ‘never be complacent’.
Jan Jeffery, 59, and Fern Maxted, 35, have told their story about being diagnosed within just weeks of one another at the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October.
Jan told Metro.co.uk: ‘I found a tiny lump a year before I was diagnosed, and went to the two-week breast clinic, and had all the checks done. And I did the ultrasound and they told me it was just ageing, normal ageing.
‘It wasn’t that long after actually that the lump started to grow – and I just thought, that’s just a cyst, it’s just getting bigger. And I thought when I’ve got time, I’ll go back and get him to drain it. And I just sat on it for months, and it kind of got bigger and bigger.
‘I never at any point really did think it was cancer because I don’t tend to do that. I tend to think it’d be something else. I just thought it would be fine.’
When she returned to the doctor in June last year, she was sent for another ultrasound where she was told ‘no… that’s not a cyst’ and she ‘nearly fell through the floor’ upon realising it was breast cancer.
‘When you first get diagnosed, the first thing you do is think about your own funeral,’ added Jan, who is an English teacher at Highworth Grammar School in Ashford, Kent.
‘Then, once I got over the shock I started to think well, I’m nearly 60, I’ve had a really lovely, lucky life and I’ve seen my kids grow up. I have grandchildren. I’d rather not die this early but I haven’t done badly.’
But Jan, who is also mum to Luke, 33, said the one thing keeping her going was thinking, ‘Thank God it’s not the children.’
Then around two weeks later she remembers ‘as clear as day’ she was sat with Fern in the garden in the sun when her daughter said: ‘I think I’ve found a bit of a lump that I’m going to get checked out – I’m sure it’s nothing, though.’
Fern told Metro.co.uk: ‘I would always sort of check in the shower when I was having a wash – but I couldn’t feel anything in the shower. It was only when I was actually laying down.
‘Mum’s was like a rock, but mine felt more like a – this is absolutely grim – sort of a cooked cauliflower, like a thickening. If I laid at a slight angle you might see a kind of dimpling in the skin.’
Fern, who previously managed an Airbnb, said she also had pain under her armpit and down her arm, but put this down to carrying a hoover around at work all day.
‘Obviously this was my lymph nodes, and if I had felt under my armpits and taken enlarged lumps a bit more seriously rather than thinking it was explained easily, I might have picked it up earlier,’ she explained.
Jan and Fern – who live next door to each other in Bethersden, a village near Ashford – both stressed the importance of ‘checking every month minimum’ in different positions, and not just the breasts but all around the chest such as under the arms and around the collarbones.
Fern said when she had biopsies on her breasts it was when ‘the penny really dropped’.
‘You kind of realise that you’ve got cancer at that point, and all of a sudden, you are just a piece of meat on the table,’ added Fern, who is mum to Presley, 12, Isabella, 10, and Matilda, 5.
‘I resigned myself to the idea that this is going to be terminal straight away. I started thinking about my children and what I’m gonna get to see, and then you have that horrible wait for scans.
‘So I went for about two weeks thinking I’m going to have to get used to the fact that I’m not going to be here very long. I saw my little boy’s leavers’ service in Year 6, and wondered if I’d get to see my girls’ ones.’
But thankfully it hadn’t spread and was locally advanced – which means the cancer is likely to return – so they took Fern straight in for a mastectomy.
‘Women don’t worry about this so much because they think they can just have a boob job,’ Fern said. ‘But that’s not the case. I can’t have a reconstruction because of the medication I am on for at least two-and-a-half years.
‘I don’t have a boob on one side and there’s no other way of saying it – it looks really horrific.’
Fern received her diagnosis in July 2022, the day before her mum started chemotherapy.
‘The night before I started chemo I was just laying on the settee crying – partly because they give you steroids and they make you a bit wired – but I would have been awake all night thinking about Fern, anyway,’ Jan added.
‘When your kids are ill all you want to do is look after them, but the thought of not being able to because I might be ill myself is… really difficult.
‘But we did juggle through. My husband, Colin, is around a lot and we were able to fully support each other as families – but we’re so lucky we were in a position to be able to do that.
‘Obviously I would never wish for my daughter or myself to have cancer, but having it at the same time was weirdly comforting in a way because I know exactly what she’s going through – I’m not on the outside trying to understand.
‘She had a rougher ride than I did but my hair fell out and I had that gruelling chemo, so I do know what it’s like. It’s a strange kind of silver lining.’
Because Fern was so young she got tested to see if her cancer may be linked to genetics, and it was – so Jan did the same and was also offered a mastectomy, where doctors found more pre-cancerous material in her breast.
Jan said: ‘If Fern hadn’t had the genetic test, I wouldn’t have had it and I’d be sitting here now with another quite big cancer growing. So Fern has kind of saved me from having to go through this all again as well.’
Fern said the ‘wait for chemotherapy was awful, because there are so many people who need it’.
She added: ‘The lady taking my blood told me she had a mum in the Friday before, who was begging for her daughter to have her chemotherapy space.
‘I knew that was my mum and obviously that just devastated me. It floored me.’
When Fern finally started her chemotherapy, she had a reaction to one of the drugs and went into anaphylactic shock.
‘As the medication started going in, the nurses that were in the room were dealing with another patient facing the other way,’ she said.
‘The only way I could describe it is it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I could barely get any words out and I thought, this is it. I actually thought I was going to die in that chair.
‘Luckily the nurse heard me and she turned around, cut it all off and stopped the chemo. Then it felt like I had to go back to the beginning.’
How to check for signs of breast cancer
CoppaFeel! offers these simple steps on how to check your own chest for signs of cancer.
Look
- Look at your boobs, pecs or chest.
- Look at the area from your armpit, across and beneath your boobs, pecs or chest, and up to your collarbone.
Be aware of any changes in size, outline or shape and changes in skin such as puckering or dimpling.
Feel
- Feel each of your boobs, pecs or chest.
- Feel the area from your armpit, across and beneath your boobs, pecs or chest, and up to your collarbone.
Be aware of any changes in skin such as puckering or dimpling, or any lumps, bumps or skin thickening which are different from the opposite side.
Notice your nipples
- Look at each of your nipples.
Be aware of any nipple discharge that’s not milky, any bleeding from the nipple, any rash or crusting on or around your nipple area that doesn’t heal easily and any change in the position of your nipple
After several ‘gruelling’ months of chemotherapy, Fern completed her treatment in March this year and then had three weeks of radiotherapy. She said her children and husband Mark, were a ‘massive source of strength’ throughout.
The mum and daughter are still both undergoing treatment, but they are positive about their futures and say the NHS was ‘absolutely amazing’.
Fern is now an ambassador for breast cancer awareness charity Coppafeel! and is about to start training to become an oncology counsellor supporting cancer patients.
She added: ‘When you think about breast cancer, you think of pink feather boas and coffee mornings. You don’t realise how serious a reality it is, and don’t ever think it will really happen to you.’
Jan took part in Cancer Research UK’s Shine Night Walk last weekend in London, and her team have raised more than £10,000 for the charity. You can donate to their fundraiser here.
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