A Margate nursery worker who was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was just 25 years old hopes to raise awareness of the disease and urges anyone with concerns to push to be heard if they feel they are being dismissed.
Eve Ross, now 26, first went to her GP after finding a ‘very very small lump’ under her armpit in January 2024.
She said: “I went to the doctor and the nurse was feeling for it. I could tell she couldn’t feel it but she sent me for an ultra scan.
“I went for that to Canterbury but the man didn’t take the photos properly and I was told it was benign.
“Months went by and it got bigger and bigger until it was the size of a golf ball. I kept saying it’s a lump and was told it’s not a lump and diagnosed with inflammation and given some cream.
“I went about my life, went to work as normal but it got to the point that I couldn’t use my arm because it was so painful.”
Eventually the pain became so great that Eve, who works in the nursery on the hospital grounds, walked across to A&E to ask for help.
She said: “At A&E I saw a doctor who was the first one to say they felt a lump and sent me to the breast clinic.
“I was finally diagnosed on May 31.”
Eve had stage two cancer and feels that if she had been listened to earlier she may not have had to go through chemotherapy as well as the surgeries and radiotherapy.
Before all those procedures Eve and boyfriend George had embryos frozen to ensure she could go through IVF if she is unable to conceive naturally in the future.
Eve said: “I had to have chemo before surgery because it was so big they needed to shrink it first and the reason I had so much pain was because the cancer was sitting on nerves.
“I had chemo, two surgeries and radiotherapy.
“If it had been caught when it was small I probably wouldn’t have needed the chemo.
“I had to go through IVF before the chemo started because I needed to get my eggs frozen.
“That will be an ongoing thing to go through IVF. I might be able to have children naturally but I didn’t want to risk it.”
Eve also found out that she has a BRCA1 gene mutation which can lead to an increased risk of developing certain cancers, most notably breast and ovarian cancer.
People with a BRCA1 variant have a 50% chance of passing the variant to each of their children. It was when Eve was diagnosed that it was found her mum and her siblings also have the variant.
Eve was finally given the all-clear on December 20th last year and ‘rung the bell’ to mark the milestone. Ringing the bell at QEQM’s Viking Day Unit symbolises the completion of cancer treatment.
She still has ongoing hormone therapy, medication and an injection once a month but is cancer free.
Now, Eve wants to make sure people are aware of the signs and says to speak up if concerns aren’t taken seriously.
She said: “I want to warn people that this can happen even when you are young, we are not invincible.
“You can be any age and have cancer, you can have breast cancer in your armpits not just in your breasts.
“People need to push their doctors (if they are concerned). I went by what the doctors said and ended up with stage two cancer when it could have been caught when it was small. That’s why, after I was told I was cancer free, I wanted to put my story out there – to spread awareness.”
There are around 56,000 new cases of breast cancer in women every year and also around 400 new breast cancer cases in men annually. It is the most common cancer in the UK.
Around 80% of women diagnosed with breast cancer are over 50. However, around 250 people under 30 in the UK are diagnosed with the disease every year.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Find help
Breast Cancer Now https://breastcancernow.org/
Breast Cancer Support https://breastcancersupport.org.uk/
Macmillan Cancer Support https://www.macmillan.org.uk/
Moobs – male breast cancer support – https://www.moobs.uk/
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