Jacquie hails her caring cancer team

Jacquie Lloyd.

07 November 2009

JACQUIE Lloyd believed she was going into hospital to have a minor cyst removed, until she woke up with only one breast.

The trauma of discovering she had breast cancer at the age of just 24 was made worse by losing a breast without any warning and the gruelling radiotherapy afterwards.

Thirty-three years later, she got her breast back - at the same time as learning she had been hit by breast cancer for the second time. Now recovering well, she wants to urge other women to consider reconstruction. And, along with two other patients, she nominated her surgeon, Richard Haywood, for the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital's Patient Choice awards. Mr Haywood won a silver award at the ceremony, with Mrs Lloyd there to watch.

Mrs Lloyd, who is originally from London, was never offered a breast reconstruction until she moved to Norfolk three years ago. Now living in Overstrand, she said: “It is incredible. I hadn't had anything there for 33 years. If I had to cope with both sides of by body being flat I am not sure I could have lived with myself. It has been life-changing for me.

“When I first met Mr Haywood I thought I had cancer a long time ago, I would never have cancer again. And there I was talking to him and we both knew I had cancer. The whole experience that happened years ago came back to me. I was in quite an emotional state, but he puts you completely at ease.”

She was just 24 when she found a lump in her right breast. Doctors assured her that at her young age, it was likely to be a harmless cyst. She said: “I went into hospital thinking I was just having a cyst removed, I woke up having had a radical mastectomy. The shock was incredible.

“The radiotherapy afterwards in those days was much harsher, they absolutely blasted you. It made me sick, I was burnt. It was such a shock for my husband, it was early in our marriage.”

She was offered a false breast to wear, but even that was handled very differently to how it would be today. She said: “There was no breast care nurse, just a 'surgical appliances officer', who was a man. There was one prosthesis. I stood behind a screen, he tossed it to me and he said 'If you don't like the shape, get yourself a bath sponge and a bread knife and carve it to the shape you want'. At 24 that was very difficult.”

Doctors were unsure if the radiotherapy would have damaged her ovaries and leave her unable to have children, and were also worried that she might not survive long enough to bring up a child. She had to wait for two years and have many tests, but fortunately her son James, now 30, was born healthy.

Mrs Lloyd, a former occupational therapist, had been free of cancer for 33 years until a routine scan last year showed up a problem in her remaining breast, which came as a huge shock. By this point she had already been offered a reconstruction of her right breast, but now she needed the other breast removed too. In a 10-hour operation in January, she had her right breast reconstructed while her left breast was removed, followed by the reconstruction of her left breast. Fat and tissue from her stomach was used to make the new breasts, with painstaking reconnection of the blood vessels. She still needs a further operation on one breast, but is delighted with the results.

She said: “Considering what he was dealing with before he started, it is marvellous. Apart from the radical mastectomy, the radiotherapy I had years ago alters your body. The fat disappears - on my right side you could see all my ribs and count them easily, it was awful.

“My real message in all this is to anybody who is considering a breast reconstruction, whatever the reconstruction turns out like, just having something there is so much better than not having anything.

“I thought I was really coping well with not having something there all those years but now I realise that I hadn't really coped at all.”

She said she wanted to praise the whole team at the N&N, including Sam Norton, the other surgeon who operated on her. And she said: “Mr Haywood is terrific. You trust that he will do something to make things better and he does.”

Mr Haywood, consultant in reconstructive and plastic surgery, said: “It was a difficult thing for her to undergo, she had a truly awful experience when she was much younger. For me it was a long operation but you just get on and do it.

“I feel very honoured to be nominated by the patients. The reason I can be nominated is because I have a massive team around me who are exceptional, including the support staff. What we do is a privilege.”