From losing a breast to climbing a mountain

Bcelebrated is about celebrating life and leaving a legacy. When we talk about celebrating life, we don't just mean the sugary sweet stuff that comes wrapped in a pretty package. Life is tricky, and sometimes the best gifts of all come wrapped as tragedy, disease, and hardship. If we can embrace it all there is much to be learned from the challenges life throws us. 

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. So today we want to share Deb Hunt's inspiring story with you. It's a great example of embracing challenge and growing from it. Diagnosed with Breast Cancer in April of 2008, she endured a mastectomy, 18 weeks of chemotherapy, 5 weeks of radiation and a complete upheaval of her life. She says that all of it has made her life better. You'll discover by reading her story that Deb has a great attitude towards life, and now that attitude is going to experience some altitude - as she and 3 friends climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in Sept. 2010 to raise awareness and funds for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.  Here's her story:

My name is Deb Hunt, I live in Oxfordshire, England with my husband Martin, two teenage children and a horse sized Labradoodle dog named Bailey. It was on April 1^st 2008 that I discovered I was to become one of the 46,000 women in the UK that are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. April 1^st in the UK is known as ‘April Fools Day’, a day when jokes are played – unfortunately for me it was no laughing matter! At the age of 43; wife; mother; part-time charity worker; dog walker; taxi service etc etc, juggling life and trying to keep all the balls in the air on a daily basis, as we all do, I decided that I was not going to become a ‘victim’ and that I would tackle this challenge head on.

A mastectomy quickly followed, then 18 weeks of chemotherapy and 5 weeks of daily doses of radiotherapy, with the weekends off for good behaviour!

Black humour got us through and smiling and laughing really was the best medicine. When I went in for my surgery I hung a picture of that famous David Beckham Armani ad on the end of my bed with the strap line ‘only doctors this good looking need stop here!’ It worked like a dream, all the doctors and nurses had a smile on their face as soon as they entered the room and it immediately banished any gloom.

I can’t pretend that the chemotherapy was fun, believe me, having one tit and no hair doesn’t do a lot for a girls confidence!, but with the support of wonderful family and friends and more laughter than I have ever had in my life before we made it through. I say ‘we’ because being diagnosed with any sort of cancer doesn’t just affect the individual, it has an impact on all those around you.

So, what are my top tips for getting through the biggest challenge of your life?

Smile, smile, smile – don’t let it get you down. If you smile, those around you smile too and I believe looking at the funny side of things really works.

Write a diary (mine’s called ‘My Right Tit!’) - Write down the good things, write down the bad things, write down how you feel. When you don’t feel like smiling it’s a good way to vent your anger and frustration at the down right unjustness of the disease and why it’s chosen to inflict itself on your life.

When you go in for surgery get David Beckham (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp – the choice is yours!) on the end of your bed, it works a treat!

After surgery aim to wear your ‘normal’ clothes as soon as possible. Girls, get your lip gloss and mascara on before the docs come round, celebrate your eyelashes – let’s face it you are gonna be without them for a while so make the most of them while you can!

Get your ‘new hair’ sorted as soon as you know you will be having chemo. Take your wig to the hairdressers; get it cut to a style that suits you. Wigs usually have about 40% too much hair in them, having it styled makes it look more realistic. I was so pleased with mine I wore it out to lunch that day and I met people during my chemotherapy that had absolutely no idea what I was going through – that was a massive morale boost. Having a good wig (or several if you prefer) also gave me the pleasure (?) of shaving my hair off as soon as it started to fall out. I was in control of it, not the chemo and I didn’t even cry until I saw it disappearing up the vacuum nozzle!

Acupuncture helped me too. I had a weekly session and it really helped control fatigue and also kept my blood counts high, preventing any delays in the chemo cycles.

Plan Something. If your chemo is on a 3 week cycle by the third week you usually feel reasonably good. Plan something for each of those weeks. Get out to lunch with your girl friends, do something fun, do something ‘normal’.

If it’s possible carry on working. I was lucky in that I had an office based job. I had one week off after each chemo cycle and then went back to work for two weeks before starting the process again. It keeps a sense of normality in your life and certainly makes the weeks go by faster.

Welcome all the treatment they throw at you. Accept the chemo as a friend not an enemy. The side effects may not be pleasant but at least you know it’s doing something!

Eat chocolate, drink wine, read magazines, laugh with friends, make the most of life and don’t let the shear damned inconvenience of having breast cancer change the person you are.

So, there you go. Deb Hunt’s  top tips for getting through all the bullshit!

I finished radiotherapy last November and looking back the whole experience now seems to be a bit surreal. As I left the hospital for the last time I suddenly felt as if I had fallen into a vast void. What now? No more routine visits, no more doctors feeling your boobs (oops, sorry I meant boob!), no more monitoring your every move. I needed something to focus on and in a moment of madness decided that I would do something that I would never have considered doing before; a skydive!

Five months later I threw myself out of a plane (strapped to a good looking instructor of course!) and raised £2500 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, one of the UK’s top Breast Cancer charities. It was an amazing experience and made me realise that anything was achievable. I have never felt more alive than during those free-falling seconds before the parachute went up and by the time I had landed on the ground I was a different woman.

The old cliché that ‘life is for living’ is so true. Cancer is a wake up call. With the great research that is taking place, around breast cancer in particular, more women are surviving the disease but having gone through it puts a new perspective on your life. Before Breast Cancer I was drifting. It has given me a new focus and I am now determined to help in the fight against the disease in the hope that none of my family or friends have to go through what I have been through. Great research doesn’t come without a cost so following the skydive, and a few too many glasses of wine, myself and three great friends decided that we would do something ‘big’ to raise a few more pennies for the cause.

It was a pretty fateful evening that night in the pub, because by the end of it we had decided that we were all up for a massive challenge, something that was way out of our comfort zone, something that would mean that we would have to train hard to be fit to do it and something that would be impressive enough to enable us to raise the target we had set ourselves of £20,000. That challenge is the Kilimanjaro Summit Trek in September 2010! At 5,892metres Kilimanjaro is the highest point in the African continent and the tallest free standing mountain in the world. Now if I could just put things into context, all four of us get out of breath running up the stairs, so you can see we have quite a way to go before we tackle the summit!

This adventure has already completely changed my daily life. We all decided that we would fund the trip ourselves so that all the money raised would go to the charity (Breakthrough Breast Cancer) and have tried to approach the challenge in as business-as-like fashion as possible. This challenge is also a journey of self development, something that we didn’t anticipate. We have found ourselves giving press and radio interviews, meeting with business executives, learning marketing and PR tricks, all skills that will no doubt help us in the future. It’s also amazingly good fun thinking up different fundraising ideas and innovative ways to get people to part with their money – charities in particular are finding it hard in the present economic climate.

So you see, there is life after Breast Cancer. If I’m being totally honest I think it’s fair to say that there is a better life after Breast Cancer. I enjoy and appreciate my friends and family much more than I did before (and that was quite a lot!); I see the funny side and the positive in everything; I don’t take things for granted, like the beautiful countryside that I live in or a clear blue sky. All these things have new meaning when you become a ‘survivor’. At the end of the day, none of us know how long the Earth will be graced with our unique presence so let’s make the most of it while we can and make a difference whilst we’re here.

To support Deb's mission join Bcelebrated and enter the code ALTITUDE. You'll save 20% off your membership and we'll donate $20.00 to her fund.

To learn more about Deb and her trek to Kilimanjaro go to her site at: www.twin-peaks.co.uk