Sandy’s story highlights that breast cancer is not just a disease that impacts women

“Leading up to my diagnosis, I was getting very tired. I was having to pull over on the way home from work to have a nap. I was also experiencing pain in my right breast and I couldn’t tolerate alcohol. I remember having a conversation with someone who had been diagnosed with cancer that an intolerance to alcohol was one of the first symptoms they experienced. I know it sounds a little odd, but I could also hear my brother’s voice saying, “look up, look up.” I ignored it for a while and finally one day I heard him screaming at me while I was driving and I looked up and there was a billboard encouraging women over the age of 40 to have a mammogram,” says Sandy.

Sandy went home and did a self-examination where she discovered a lump in her right breast. She booked a mammogram straight away. After a series of scans and tests, Sandy was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, which had spread to her lymph nodes.

Throughout her treatment, Sandy spoke to the genetic health team at Gold Coast University Hospital about her family’s history with cancer.

“At the time of my brother’s passing, we didn’t know what type of cancer he had. He only people about his cancer in the weeks leading up to his passing. He lived in a small country town in NSW and didn’t have access to a lot of healthcare services. He was a smoker, so we assumed he had lung cancer but that wasn’t the primary cause of his cancer. My grandmother passed away of breast cancer when she was about my age. And we recently found out that my cousin’s daughter, who is in her twenties, has breast cancer.  The genetics team determined that the BRCA1 gene runs in our family and that my brother’s primary cancer was breast cancer,” says Sandy.

Sandy now wants to share a powerful message with other men and women: get yourself checked.