Margaret Davey's fight against aggressive breast cancer Margaret Davey from Orange Spot Bakery, Glenelg, is fighting breast cancer. IN September, SA Weekend met Orange Spot Bakery's Margaret Davey. Three months later, Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer. This is her story. I noticed a couple of weeks prior to going overseas the skin in my left breast had changed slightly. I was in the spa and it was buoyant and it looked like there was a hole on the top where the skin was pulled in. I thought nothing of it but I was due for a mammogram. I was 52. Our daughter Abby is head of humanities and English at an international school in a village outside Salzberg. She wasn't coming home for Christmas and they had this course in Vienna at the Hotel Sacha so I thought I'd learn about making sachertorte then catch the train and see her for a few days over Christmas. Then I got a bit worried so the morning I was leaving I went to my local GP. I couldn't feel anything and I do practice self-examination. He couldn't feel anything or see anything but he got upset with me and said "Margaret, why didn't you come earlier? We won't get any results. I said "that's fine, we'll talk about it when I get back." It was only going to be a short trip. I had the mammogram on the Saturday morning and took the night flight to Dubai. The course in Vienna was only three days. It was great, I loved it. You learn the traditional techniques and the hotel is the place that actually developed the sachertorte so you have the ambience of that. I spent time wandering between patisseries and cake stalls and chocolatiers, picking up ideas. If you can just bring back one or two ideas (for the bakery) it makes life that much more interesting. We're so tiny here in Adelaide. I mean I love Adelaide to death, I've never thought of living anywhere else but you have to get out and see things and it makes you appreciate what you have back here as well. I hadn't had a lot of contact with Nick because of the time difference. He is absolutely hopeless with any sort of technology. Whether telephones or computers, he can't work them. I'd been in the village 24 hours, maybe a little longer, and Abby came racing home from school in tears. I hadn't seen much of her because she leaves at 6 in the morning and doesn't get home until 7 and it's their winter at the moment so it gets dark at about 3 in the afternoon. She couldn't get it out. She said "you've got to ring Dad" and I thought "God, something's happened, an accident or something." I got on the phone and he was at work and he said "you've got to come home, it's bad." Abby was distraught, the children in the village (that I have got to know) were distraught. Apparently from the mammogram they can tell it was large, it was aggressive and it was invasive. The reason I couldn't and didn't realise I had it was it was deep in the tissue. I'm very large breasted and it was growing from deep in the tissue towards the wall of the chest rather than out towards the skin. So when the breast was buoyant in the water the tumour was pulling it back down. Emirates were amazing. I rang them from the village and said I'm on the next train to Vienna, what can you get me on? They put me in first class; how wonderful! They had someone waiting for me in Dubai to take me to the lounge. I got home Tuesday night at about 9 and they had a car at the airport to take me home. I couldn't believe how wonderful they were. Sitting in the waiting room - which was chockers - was where it really hit me; have we gone forward or back? My surgeon didn't charge over the scheduled fee. You're bulk-billed. You have to meet these people to understand they do that because they know that this is the worst time of your life and there is no need to make huge amounts of money out of people who are suffering. They are amazing people. If you attend a private clinic, the ultrasound and mammogram is something like $800 and you have to pay it upfront. I'd had mine already but some of the women hadn't. They were talking to their husbands saying "how are we going to pay for this? Maybe we could make a payment arrangement? You think, at the worst time of your life it should not be like this. But the thing that really set me off was when it comes to surgery. I had to have surgery within days and the first question when we walked in - Nick and I were basket cases, we sat down holding hands - was "are you public or private?." We said "private" and it was almost like he gave a big sigh of relief, "OK, let's get on with it." I said "why did you ask?" Under the public system there is a waiting list, no matter the gravity of your cancer. This is November 29. I would not have been operated on until the middle of January. That's the death sentence straight away. I lived through the 1970s and all those social reforms and the system was supposed to be so that it was better for everyone, not just a few. Everything happens so quickly and you don't have time until after the operation to sit and think about these things and I just thought it's wrong. I mean you can cope with $800 for a mammogram, someone will help you with the money, but to be told you can't have lifesaving surgery until the middle of January to me is just wrong. The cancer surgeon was so enthralled with my cancer that he got his students in to have a look because he had never had a woman who had picked up this kind before it got to the terminal stage. He said if I'd left it another six weeks it probably would have been terminal because it was so aggressive it would have gone to the bones and other organs. He tried to conserve as much of the breast as possible, in my case it was about one third. He takes one lymph node to start with, the sentinel, and if the cancer is going to spread, that's the one it will go to first. If it has cancer in it, they take four more, so you don't know the scale of the surgery you're going in for. They didn't see any so they only took the main one but they take as wide a margin as possible. They took basically the top half of my breast. I came out of the operation quite well. All the children came home. None of them were coming home for Christmas and within two days all of them were there, with their partners and children. They wheeled me back into the room and the whole family was standing there. It's a life-changing moment, you realise how much you are loved. I was pain-free. It was like nothing had happened to me. I was sitting up in bed talking. Apparently the surgeon has this way of injecting the whole area with anaesthetic and it works. I could see the cut straight away. I looked down and thought "oh, God" because a lot of people who have had cancer said it took them three months to even have a look at the scar. That's how dramatic it is for some women. I had Christmas and New Year for recovery then straight into six months of chemo followed by two weeks recovery then six weeks of daily radiotherapy. He said "you're a patient for life now, every six months you'll be in here." I said "fine, I can handle that." The day before I was starting the chemo I said to my daughter, "I've decided not to have it, I can't do it." I'm totally serious. Even the surgeon gave me the option. Your family are sitting there saying "she's going to have everything" but I can understand people saying no. I read all this information and I'm thinking "do I give it to Nick to read? I have to. For two days he was reading and he kept saying to me "it can't be this bad." You can't kiss your husband for the first week after chemo. We are together because we have a very strong love for each other and part of that is essential love and to have that taken away for six months ... I'm thinking he is not going to love me after that. Also I can't see my grandchildren for 10 days of every cycle. We use Skype to talk to them even though they live around the corner. And I have no hair. I woke up one morning and the whole bed was full of hair. They told me it would happen and Abby said to go and have it cropped really short. The morning I woke up there was nothing except little patches. It was the one day I was grateful my husband works nights so I didn't wake up with him next to me and the bed full of hair. He was gone and by the time he got home I'd changed the sheets. When he walked in the door I said "I need you to do a job for me, I need you to shave my hair properly." He said he wouldn't do it, I said "you have to." He went out for a while then came back and said "OK, let's get hot towels and shaving cream" and he's there shaving my head which was fabulous. It doesn't worry him and it doesn't worry me. Most of the time I sit at home so I don't wear a cap or anything but there was a knock on the front door and I thought it must have been Nick and I opened the door and there was this young delivery driver. This poor lad, he must have been about 25, looked at me and he just burst into tears. I felt so awful for him. I said "it's OK sweetheart, I'll go and get my cap." He was mortified. Silly things like that. The day before I said to Abby "I just can't do it," I was inconsolable. She said to me "we want you to live and I'm going to be with you, Dad's going to be with you." So yes, I've had my second round and I'm almost due for my third. Every three weeks, the minute you start to feel good you're back in it. All the amazing things that have happened in the world and then this; they've got to kill you to save you. Each three weeks I give my oncologist and the nurses my hand and ask them to save me. They look back at you and say "yes, but we will need to make you a wee bit sick first." They are my lifeline and I thank them unconditionally. I still get up with Nick (at 2.30am) and I don't go back to bed. I potter around. It's a beautiful time of the day. I've never had the chance in 33 years to watch the sun come up. I go down and pick up the paper and sit out here with the dog and listen to the birds. I function. I don't do anything. How do people go back to work? It's ridiculous. We were really fortunate. Our son had his own business but he'd decided to look for something different so I said to Nick, "give him a job managing the business." He has a business degree. I have an economics degree and that helped me manage the business over the years. He rang back 24 hours later and said "when do you want me to start?" It was such a relief, for Nick more than anything. Nick struggles. He hates being at work. He's loved the job from the minute he was 15, it's been his whole life and he loves it but now he can't bear to leave me. Isn't it wonderful? He's just that sort of man. I think back to the day before the chemo when I said to Abby "I can't have it" and I doubted him and now I know he will be with me forever. I am so lucky. He's my soul mate. Margaret finished chemotherapy in mid-March and is undergoing radiotherapy five days a week. She finishes in five weeks and will have tests to assess the treatment's success. Nick and Margaret say they are looking forward to many more years of married life.