Breast Cancer Treatment

Firstly, my only child Grace  who was diagnosed in 2010 aged 5 with neuroblastoma, an aggressive childhood cancer, died in 2016 after six years of standard treatment of care. I buried her on her 11th birthday. 

The combined stress and grief took its toll on me so I used alcohol as my coping mechanism and despite quitting drinking in January 2017, I still became so ill I needed a liver transplant in December 2018. 

I spent four months in St Vincent's hospital in Dublin having suffered complete liver failure due to cirrhosis, cirrhotic cardiomyopathy which is heart failure and complete renal failure. 

This multi organ failure caused my body to swell to twice its normal size with the amount of fluid buildup. So I had to be permanently attached to a kidney dialysis machine in intensive care which kept me alive until the lifesaving transplant operation. 

I also had developed cellulitis on my lower right leg which caused it to burst, leaking out an oily substance that no hospital bandage could contain, making walking virtually impossible. I remember having to put absorbent sheets under my foot dragging it across the floor when I tried to walk so I wouldn't slip on the leaking fluid. 

Still, I was determined to survive this ordeal and used my daughter's mantra "NEVER GIVE UP" to get through it. You see, Grace was an amazingly, brave child with a lust for life who just wouldn't give in to the illness.  

Two years is the norm for regaining pre-transplant fitness. But, as well as having to relearn how to walk, I also suffered quite an extensive arm injury during the surgery.  This made everyday tasks that little bit more difficult and also hindered my ability to swim which is my preferred mode of exercise.  

Anyway, as I was recovering and trying to regain some sort of normality without my daughter, in April 2020 I discovered a little lump on my breast. I immediately went to the doctor who swiftly referred me on to the breast clinic where I was told I had a sebaceous cyst but it would still have to come out. 

Time passed by and eventually almost a year later I received a phone call asking me if I'd go to Mullingar hospital to have this cyst removed but no appointment letter ever came. Incidentally, Grace was born in that same hospital in 2005.  The same thing happened a couple more times but no appointment letters ever came. 

By now it was October 2021 and I noticed that the "cyst" had grown significantly and there was puckering on my breast. I went back to the GP who referred me to the clinic again where this time, after an examination, an ultrasound, a mammogram and a punch biopsy, I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma - breast cancer. 

Unfortunately for me, I was then told that the medication to prevent organ rejection lowered my immune system leaving me prone to all sorts including getting cancer and I have been seeking out alternative therapies ever since.  

This is where it gets complicated. When I was diagnosed with the cancer the liver specialist immediately reduced my immune suppressing drugs in order to help my body fight the cancer. Care needed to be taken so as not to reduce them too much and cause liver rejection. 

But as time went on and the medication was reduced further, unfortunately in August 2022 I suffered an episode of the aforementioned organ rejection. I was yellow jaundiced and vomiting uncontrollably. So I was put on steroids and a high dose of immune suppressing drugs to help my liver recover. But this was not without the risk of the tumour growing and cancer spreading elsewhere. 

You see I really am caught between a rock and a hard place. Bearing this in mind, it is now incredibly urgent that I get the cancer treatment I need as quickly as possible to get rid of it and prevent it from coming back while also ensuring I don't suffer rejection again. 

After everything I have been through I have decided that mainstream cancer treatment is not right for me at this time and Instead I have opted to follow an alternative path of therapies some of which are incredibly expensive. 

I had a course of high dose intravenous vitamin C infusions and need to have several more at a cost of €2,000 per every six session course. I have also engaged with an herbalist who has prescribed me several cancer fighting supplements at an ongoing cost I am unable to sustain from my own finances.  I also need to have lymphatic drainage massages, hormone balancing and I've completely overhauled my diet and am also considering the Hope4cancer clinic in Mexico. 

This is where I need your help and am therefore appealing to you to please share my story far and wide and please, please donate whatever you can, anything at all as it all adds up, so I can get the lifesaving treatment I need, leave the cancer in the past and try to have a good quality of whatever life I have left. Thank you for reading my story. May none of this ever darken your door. Thank you. Ethna ☘️