After tying the knot, newlyweds Jodie Pullinger and Will Barker were supposed to be having the time of their lives. But their future together was marred by an unexpected intruder: cancer.
As it turned out, Jodie was already exhibiting signs and symptoms when they travelled to Playa Del Carmel in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula for their honeymoon, said a report by The Daily Mail.
She remembered that she was always hot, and that the weather had been “boiling.”
Photo credit: The Daily Mail
“I was having a number of showers a day and wearing bikinis the whole time, but didn’t realize or notice I had a lump,” she said.
Then, weeks later, when her husband Will was hugging her, he felt a hard bump under her armpit. Alarmed, he urged her to have it checked.
They ordered an ultrasound and biopsy, and when the results came back, it carried some terrible tidings.
She had stage-three breast cancer.
“When I found out it was cancer I was numb and shocked,” Jodie said. “I went from being a new bride who had just returned from the honeymoon of my dreams in Mexico to undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.”
Thankfully, the doctors were quick to tell her that it was treatable, and immediately talked about the ways on how to proceed.
Photo credit: The Daily Mail
As it turned out, the lump Will had felt was actually a swollen lymph node infected by the cancer, not the orange-sized tumor in her right breast.
“Keen to have the tumor cut out of her, she immediately underwent a single mastectomy on her right breast, before having it rebuilt,” the report said.
She then underwent six rounds of three-week chemotherapy, which had been tough on her, suffering bouts of infection one after the other.
The treatment caused her face to bloat. Her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes fell out. It left her feeling sad and hideous and unattractive, but even though she wanted to stop a few times with the treatment, she knew that she must push forward.
Thankfully Look Good Feel Better got in touch with her while she was being treated in Parkside Hospital in Wimbledon.
The charity visits hospitals across the country and holds workshops, helping people with cancer cope with the physical changes the disease causes.
Photo credit: The Daily Mail
“For me, it was brilliant,” she said. “It made me feel really confident. They taught me how to do my makeup to hide the effects of treatment. I made friends too.”
It is never easy to recover from cancer and the treatments done to keep it in check, but despite all the setbacks she’s faced, Jodie sees the future brightly.
“Despite everything, I feel positive.”
READ: She’s only 8 years old and she has breast cancer
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