Sadie’s only hope for more options – and time.
04 September 2024
In 2016, Sadie was virtually – and almost literally – on top of the world. She was young, fit, healthy and happy.
Until she found a lump.
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With “all the odds in her favour”, Sadie shares that she didn’t feel too worried. But still, she booked in to get the lump checked.
And that’s when Sadie first heard the words “you have cancer”.
“I didn't think it would be breast cancer, because I've had lumps before that have turned out to be fibroadenoma.
“I was young – just 34 years old. I was fit and healthy, and I didn’t have a family history or any symptoms.
“But within a couple of days of visiting the doctor and being tested, I was told that it was breast cancer. It was a really big shock,” Sadie shared.
Within a week, Sadie began treatment – a lumpectomy, radiation and estrogen-blocking medication – which proved a success. By the end of 2016, Sadie was given the ‘all clear’, although she continued to take medication for another five years to reduce the risk of recurrence.
“I just got on with my life, even though at the time it was really distressing, but then you find out, okay, it's early stage, it's treatable. And I'd looked at the statistics of how likely it was to come back, and it was a tiny statistic. I think at the five-year mark 98% of women are still cancer-free,” she explained.
“So I still took my medication and still got my annual scan and thought, ‘I'm pretty healthy let’s move on’."
And move on was exactly what Sadie did for the seven years she was ‘cancer free’.
Hearing the words: “your cancer is back”. The news no one wanted to give Sadie.
Until 2023, Sadie lived ‘cancer free’ and she enjoyed life. She had all but completed her law degree, she’d set her sights on attempting a cycling world record, and she’d returned to travelling the world. She set off on a study trip to Italy.
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Not long into her stay, Sadie fell over and hurt her hip. She was struggling to recover, so with the support of a translator, she saw a local doctor who ordered a routine scan.
When the results came back, no one wanted to translate the news for her. She had to wait another day to be given the news by an English-speaking doctor: the cancer was back.
“The doctor went through the scan in excruciating detail. He showed me all the tumours and it was just like, tumour, tumour, tumour, tumour, tumour, tumour,” Sadie recalled.
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All alone and in a foreign country, thousands of miles away from home, Sadie quickly organised a flight back to Melbourne. Back to her friends, family and the team at Peter Mac.
Once she was home, she found out just how far her cancer had spread. And that she had a life expectancy of five to seven years. Or less.
“When they did my initial scan in Italy, it was only a pelvic scan. So, when I got back to Melbourne, I had a full body scan which showed that I basically had a tumour in pretty much every vertebra going all the way up,” Sadie shared.
“I think I'm pretty resilient in being able to bounce back from things if something doesn't go the way I planned. Then I'm like, ‘Okay, let's make a new plan’. If someone says, ‘You've got this disease, that we can't cure, and the life expectancy is only a couple of years’, you can't really make a new plan from there.”
“You can't make a plan that undoes the fact that you've just been delivered a terminal diagnosis. And that was what was really hard. All I remember thinking in that moment was, ‘I don't want to die’.”
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For weeks, Sadie faced multiple tests – and time spent waiting for the results. Waiting to hear about her future.
“I'd been told by an oncologist that in about a third of the cases the tumour can mutate from hormone receptor-positive to hormone receptor-negative, which meant that I could have triple-negative breast cancer.
“That diagnosis would have meant the cancer would be a lot more aggressive and I’d face a much shorter life expectancy with a lot less treatment options.
“Waiting those few days for that was really frightening. I just remember noticing how everyone else in the world was able to go about their everyday life. Going to work and meeting their friends for a drink, and this devastating thing had just happened to me. That was really hard,” Sadie shared.
After all the tests were done and the results were in to show that her cancer hadn’t mutated. She was relieved that it wasn’t found to be triple negative breast cancer because it gave her more options.
Including the option to start a trial treatment at Peter Mac.
This treatment wasn’t a cure – because right now there are no cures for cancers that have spread to the bones. But for Sadie, it was something.
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The treatment worked well for Sadie. Scans show her cancer is under control, with all but one of the tumours in her body gone. But eventually – inevitably – Sadie knows her cancer will develop resistance.
Which is why more treatments need to be found now.
“We have really effective treatments for metastatic breast cancer – I’m on one right now. It’s killed almost all of the cancer in my body except for one tumour,” Sadie shared.
“But from here, the news can only be as good as that, or worse. Unless better treatments are found.”
How you can help give people like Sadie more options – and more time.
Today, Sadie is more than a year into her treatment. And despite the very confronting reality she faces – that her treatment could stop working at any time – she remains strong. She remains determined.
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And she holds hope that cancer researchers will discover a new treatment option, or a cure.
“I just have to hold two things in my mind: the reality of the diagnosis and the statistics, but also the hope that when I’ve exhausted the current treatments, there will be another one available. One that would extend my life,” Sadie shares.
And that’s what Peter Mac researchers are working towards.
You can help cancer researchers give people like Sadie the treatment options – and the time – they need now. Before it’s too late.
Donate today to fund vital research at Peter Mac and find more treatments, so cancer can be treated and defeated for good. So people like Sadie won’t ever have to be told “your cancer is back”.
