“Like many women, I did not check my breasts. I thought, ‘it’s not going to happen to me – I’m a breast cancer surgeon’.”
Liz O’Riordan ended up having to give up the job she had trained 20 years for, after she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer.
In 2015, at the age of 40, she had a mastectomy and last May suffered a recurrence of the disease.
Dr O’Riordan thought she would practise as a breast cancer surgeon for at least 20 years, but as it turned out she only worked as one for two years.
Radiotherapy for the second bout of cancer left her with reduced movement in her shoulder, causing her to make the “emotionally very hard” decision to give up operating.
Before she was diagnosed, Dr O’Riordan had found lumps that turned out only to be cysts, while a mammogram six months earlier had showed a healthy breast.
But another lump developed and her mother urged her to get it scanned. The surgeon, who lives near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, knew what her prognosis was immediately.
(BBC NEWS)
