Cancer nurse tells how her parents were diagnosed with the disease just weeks apart

Being a specialist nurse Catherine Berry is sadly used to telling people they have cancer, but when it is your own parents facing the disease it is a different matter.

In January last year Catherine’s dad John Fuller was diagnosed with lung cancer. Then six months later and just weeks before John, 68, died her mum, Christine, was told she had breast cancer,

“Telling someone they have cancer is awful,” says Christine. “I had always tried to give that news in a way I would want to receive it. But I never expected I would find myself at the receiving end of that cancer news. To be sitting there with my dad, and then with my mum, while someone else is saying ‘I think it is cancer’ was horrible.”

John, a retired mechanic and mobile library driver, started to feel unwell at New Year.

“Dad always had a bit of a cough, but we noticed that it was getting worse,” says Catherine, 36, from Lindley, Huddersfield.

“He was also getting short of breath and complained about a bad back. After visiting his GP, he was sent for a chest x-ray at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust. Initially they thought it was a chest infection, then pneumonia, but the antibiotics he had been given didn’t seem to be making any difference. He wasn’t getting better, and we were getting more concerned. Dad was then sent back to Calderdale Royal Hospital for another x-ray and a CT scan. That was when they found the cancer.” With her medical background, Catherine, who is a specialist nurse in the Endoscopy Units at Huddersfield and Halifax hospitals, the news wasn’t really a surprise to her, but was still a shock.

“It was really hard when I saw it written down in black and white, saying your dad has lung cancer, it knocked me back and I didn’t want to believe it.

“Dad was willing to have any treatment he could. I have two young children and my older brother Jonathan, 41, has a three-year-old son, and he desperately wanted to see all his grandchildren grow up.

“But the cancer had spread to his pleural cavity (the space between his lungs) and was too advanced for surgery. He had chemotherapy, which was really successful initially at shrinking his cancer. But it then became resistant to the chemo and started growing back really aggressively. He was given one lot of immunotherapy, but dad gradually got worse. We were then told there was nothing else they could do.”

Catherine, who is mum to Joshua, 5, and Charli, 16 months, was still on maternity leave. With support of her husband Jason, 38, brother Jonathan and his wife, Jacqui, 37, she spent as much time as she could helping her mum look after her dad.

Then during the summer Christine received a letter calling her for a routine breast screening appointment, yet despite all that was going on with John, she still went. But two weeks later she got a follow up letter saying she needed to go back.

At that appointment Christine had further tests, including another mammogram, along with an ultrasound and biopsy.

“They told me they suspected cancer,” says Christine. “When I went back for the results a week later, they confirmed it was cancer – ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) - and I would need a full mastectomy.

“I was extremely upset and scared because at that point John was very poorly with his cancer and he needed all my help to look after him. But now I had cancer too and was facing major surgery - I just didn’t know how I was going to cope.”

For Catherine it was truly awful having both parents going cancer at the same time. “I was worried about how I was going to look after them both. After seeing how poorly cancer made dad, I didn’t want to now see mum going through the same.”

But thankfully, the outlook was much more positive for Christine.

“The good news was because I did go for my screening appointment, my breast cancer was caught in the early stages. But the size of it meant I needed a mastectomy. It was planned for 19 August, but because John had deteriorated very quickly and I needed to be there for him, my surgeon decided to postpone it and put me on Letrozole - a type of hormone therapy drug which stops the cancer growing.”

John died on 14 August, surrounded by his family.

“I’d seen what cancer had done to my dad, taking him far too early,” says Christine. “I didn’t want the same to happen to my mum. We wouldn’t know if her cancer had spread until she had the mastectomy on October 10, so it was still a worrying time for us. It was hard to grieve for my dad while taking care of my mum, making sure she was okay, but worrying about her cancer at the same time.”

But the surgery was a success, removing the cancer without the need for chemotherapy and Christine continues to do well.

Catherine says as horrific as the experience has been she now uses it to help other patients.

“In my job, I perform endoscopies on patients with stomach and bowel problems, which means I often see colorectal, oesophageal and gastric cancers. I then have to break the news to people that it could be cancer.

“I saw how the way dad and Mum were told made such a huge difference to us as a family. I have now taken my personal experience back to work to make sure I can give that news to my patients even better - helping them take it all in, explaining what is going to happen and reassuring them everything is going to be done as quickly as possible.

“Anything I can do to make their cancer journey just a little bit easier for them.”

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