UNITED IN OUR FIGHT

Friendship has helped Charli Lee, 39, through her darkest time

- RACHEL TOMPKINS

Reading the poem out loud and recording it with my phone, I posted it in a WhatsApp group. 'When people found out I had cancer they worried they'd say the wrong thing, don't be daft I assured them, it's me...'

'This is so good,' my friend Naomi replied. 'And you read it so well too, Charli.' Other friends liked it too.

It was summer 2024, and the words of support were just what I needed to hear. In fact, the new group of friends I'd recently made had become a bit of a lifeline during one of the darkest periods of my life.

THE WORST NEWS

It was months earlier in February 2024, and the day of my husband Simon's 40th birthday, when my life changed forever. 'I'm sorry to tell you that the cancer is back,' a doctor at Royal Devon University Healthcare said to me, during an appointment to discuss test results. I started crying, devastated. 'I can't leave you and Georgia,' I gasped to Simon, thinking of our daughter, who was 10.

I was terrified of my life being taken away, because this wasn't the first time cancer had been part of our world. In 2017, I had been diagnosed with primary breast cancer. It was caught early, and I'd had a lumpectomy and radiotherapy. An Oncotype DX test reassured me that my chances of a recurrence were low.

Then, in the summer of 2022, I'd started getting a dull ache in my left arm. After six months, I'd gone to the GP and, after persistently pushing for tests, now, on 12 February 2024, I'd discovered the breast cancer had returned and it was inoperable, because of the location of the tumours. It was now secondary (metastatic) breast cancer, which can be treated but not cured.