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Meet Carly from our Summer Campaign
Posted by Claire Boote, on July 26, 2021.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s)
Carly, 39, lives in London
Near the end of 2019, while sitting on a chemotherapy ward with her sister who was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer, Carly found a lump under her armpit.
After putting it down to her usual post-workout aches and pains, she was urged to get it checked out due to her family history with cancer. At the age of 37, and on the day before her daughter’s fourth birthday, Carly was diagnosed with stage 2, grade 3 breast cancer.
Carly’s diagnosis came five months after her older sister Emma’s diagnosis for ovarian cancer. Emma (now 45), who works in TV production, would be the researcher of the two, sharing her encyclopaedic knowledge of everything she’d found out about their cancer types and treatment options. They both endured weekly cocktails of drugs and regular chemotherapy, including two months of simultaneous treatment.
“I wish more than anything my sister never had cancer.
Carly says,
However, the silver lining of her having it was a support like no other as she just got it, and vice versa. During the first lockdown we video called every single day!”
Carly had surgery in August 2020 involving a double mastectomy, lymph node removal and DIEP flap reconstruction using tissue from the stomach area to reconstruct the breasts (her “tummy tits” as she affectionately calls them).
After surgery, Carly “felt frazzled” with her confidence “on the floor”. She had her first proper bra fitting in years with The Bra Sisters and, after being gifted a post-surgery Zahra bra from Royce, started to regain her confidence.
But she still remembers the emotional moment when, during a routine breast examination, she saw only smooth, plain flesh where her nipples used to be. However, she grew so used to this new appearance that when she had nipple reconstruction in March 2021, she admits that her new nipples initially surprised her!
For Royce’s fashion shoot,
Carly wore a jacket embroidered on the back with the phrase, ‘To Infinity and Beyond’ – a tribute to her mother who would frequently tell her children that she “loved them to infinity and beyond!” Her mother, a model in the 1970s, passed away from breast cancer 11 years ago. “I wear it to keep her close,” explains Carly.
Carly wants to remind women that it’s not just lumps in the breast to watch out for, but under the arms too. Her family history, and discovery of having the BRCA1 gene, pushed her to seek medical help without delay.
She adds, “Our family are pretty resilient and positive. They have been through a lot but seem to handle it pretty well and with a lot of humour.” And of her sister Emma, “She was my total support. [Without her] I would have felt much more alone.”
