Breast cancer and me
October 2025 | Dr Ruth Adams
There are some dates that define my year – my birthday, early in December, signals the start of our Christmas season; my anniversary in October is a focus for a holiday or trip out, my husband’s birthday; in June, you’ve guessed it – another holiday or trip out. The significance of his birthday changed in 2020. The following week was to see shops reopening after the first covid lock-down, but June 11th, 2020, was when I was told I had breast cancer. Whilst there was every sign my cancer was non-invasive, I was informed by a masked-up surgeon, sat at the opposite side of a consulting room that it was of a scale that required me to have a mastectomy, unless I wanted to take the chance it remained non-invasive and wait to see how it developed. Rather than the socially distanced, birthday party celebration with family joining via zoom, June 11th, 2020, I and my husband started a more extreme version of self-isolation to ensure I remained covid free for my surgery.
My surgery went well, my recovery was swift and other than being lobsided, with no reconstruction or prosthesis clinics on offer (that is a longer and at times funny story), I was back at work after 4 weeks. At work, I was surrounded by warmth, a caring Manager and a team that wanted to do all they could to support me. I was welcomed back by Politicians, the elected Mayor, the LEP Chair and Chief Executives from the region, all who were genuinely empathetic and made time to call or ask about my well-being. This made a huge difference to getting back to some normality. Work colleagues and family spoke of me being stoic, brave and resilient, taking the diagnosis and surgery in my stride.
My challenge came at week 16, post-surgery, when the magnitude of having cancer and the awareness of being in the 1 in 2 people will get cancer category hit me. I had to go back into hospital for multiple appointments, a meeting with the Oncologist about my future risks, the prosthesis clinic had re-opened, and the Macmillan nurse had me scheduled for a visit to talk about my mental well-being and the services they could offer. The appointments were overwhelming and suddenly, I had the realisation that, for the immediate future, I was a hospital patient, and that life would be very different. I could not shake this feeling that for the first time ever I was sick, I was consumed by an overwhelming sense of helplessness about getting sick again.
What made the difference was my manager
In a one-to-one session I was getting quite agitated about the actions of a colleague. I can’t recall the issue as it was insignificant and something that normally I would have taken in my stride and dealt with, but I was evidently getting increasingly wound up. My manager just stopped the meeting, parked the issue, and spoke candidly and kindly about me and my situation. I was encouraged to work through my issues and take up the Macmillan support offer to enable me to process and make sense of what had happened and to manage the negative self-talk. He was tenacious in telling me that he would not let the subject drop until I got support that would enable me to focus on my total well-being and recovery.
Making a difference in the workplace
Four years on, still clear of cancer, and sadly still waiting for reconstruction surgery, I have reflected on what was important to me and what made a difference to me in recovering from cancer.
- A manager that invested the time to understand me personally, my capabilities and ways of working so that he could see and hear the warning signs, when things were not right, and I was struggling.
- Regular one-to one meetings, without these, especially in covid times, I could have hidden my struggles.
- Flexibility built on unequivocal trust, I had always worked hard and gone over and above and when I needed it, I was overwhelmed with support from my manager, colleagues and my team to take time out when I needed it to recover.
- Access to resources, toolkits and techniques that I could work through at my own pace to explore issues.
As more people of working age are diagnosed with cancer, I am keen to work with councils across the SE to share resources and insights to help managers and HR professionals to better support employees who receive a diagnosis, require treatment and / or surgery and have a long and undulating recovery journey. We are fortunate that organisations like MacMillan have developed thoughtful and useful resources to help with supporting friends and colleagues alike on their cancer journey and we will be developing our own HR resources over time to compliment these.