Michelle Mullany was too busy to get cancer.
It was the run-up to Christmas 2015 and the 38-year-old was busy juggling her full-time job as business development manager at EY with having two children under the age of five.
Although aware of the importance of examining herself, Michelle didn’t consider herself to be at high risk because there was no family history of breast cancer and she was relatively young.
However her world was turned on its head when she discovered a lump the size of a golf ball in her right breast.
“Even then I wasn’t that worried,” she said. “I’d had cysts before and assumed it was just another one. However I saw my doctor and she referred me for a mammogram ‘just to be safe’.”
She was so convinced that she didn’t have cancer that she headed to her appointment at Wythenshawe Hospital’s Nightingale Centre on her own.
“It was my first ever mammogram and as soon as they’d done it they carried out a biopsy,” recalled Michelle.
“It sounds obvious now but I didn’t realise that the lump was actually breast cancer and nobody spelt it out for me.
“The nurse was holding my hand and the doctor said ‘this isn’t looking good’ and I was told to prepare for the worst.
“I went to see a consultant straight away and she never directly said ‘you have breast cancer’.
“I thought I was misunderstanding the situation. I asked her straight if I had breast cancer and she replied: ‘We think so but we don’t know how aggressive it is or what the treatment is’.”
The biopsy results came back on December 23rd and confirmed she had an aggressive stage three cancer and needed to embark on a round of chemotherapy after Christmas.
Michelle Mullany with husband Paul
“I was told if I’d waited another three months it would have been too late,” she said.
Michelle admitted she spent much of the festive period in a trance. “I’ve got this strange memory of going around Gulliver’s World with the kids and just crying,” she said. “Telling family and friends was really hard.”
She started 2016 with 10 rounds of gruelling chemotherapy before undergoing a mastectomy at Wythenshawe Hospital.
By then she’d lost all her hair, including her eyebrows and eye lashes.
“I’d wanted a double mastectomy but they said they don’t remove healthy boobs so they just removed the right one and followed up with 15 rounds of radiotherapy,” she said.
“I think I fell off a cliff after the radiotherapy. The safety net went and I really struggled to sleep. You’re petrified every time you have a scan and it really impacts on you financially.
“I felt deformed but my husband Paul couldn’t have been more supportive. It was two years before surgeons were able to reconstruct a new breast using muscle from my stomach.”
Tests revealed Michelle’s breast cancer was oestrogen positive which would mean any reoccurrence would spread quickly. To counteract this Michelle was medically plunged into the menopause at the age of 39
“I was one of the lucky ones because I had kids already,” she said. “I’ve met a lot of women who hadn’t had children when they were diagnosed.”
In December 2016, tests could find ‘no evidence of the disease’ although Michelle continues to have annual mammograms.
“I know I have a higher chance of a recurrence so it’s always there at the back of your mind,” she said. “It changes you without actually realising.”
In 2023 she left EY after 19 years and is now the head of deal origination at MHA.
Now aged 47 she’s using her experience to raise awareness of breast cancer and is supporting a campaign to build a National Breast Imaging Academy at Wythenshawe Hospital.
By coincidence it will be an extension to the hospital’s existing Nightingale Centre, where she was treated herself.
The National Breast Imaging Academy will train 50 staff a year in breast imaging skills amidst a workforce shortage.
The build costs will be £3.9m, with £912,000 still to be raised. In a bid to raise the shortfall an exclusive members’ network called ‘The 100 Club’ is being launched with all the proceeds going towards the Academy.
She’s also taken part in a number of fundraising events including climbing Yorkshire Three Peaks and a 12-hour danceathon.
Both events were organised by Louise Stephenson, of Rowan Executive Search and the founder of The Empowering Women’s Network. She is part of The 100 Club, which is raising funds for the National Breast Imaging Academy.
Michelle said: “My children are now aged 11 and 14 and as time goes by the less I think about what happened but it’s always there.
“I speak out to help other people and to support the National Breast Imaging Academy.”
- For further information on The 100 Club contact Jessica Ruth