The article, featuring METUP-UK founder Jo Taylor, starts:
Jo Taylor’s situation is something of a double-edged sword. She relies on continuous treatment for secondary breast cancer to maintain a good quality of life, but she doesn’t want that treatment to take over her life.
“I was diagnosed with HER2+ primary breast cancer in 2007 and I was re-diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2014,” she explains to This Is MedTech. “I knew that I had a risk of developing it but still, it was a shock. I had no symptoms and wouldn’t have found the lumps in my neck if it wasn’t for a friend finding a lump in her neck, which then made me check my neck lymph nodes.”
Secondary breast cancer, also called metastatic breast cancer (MBC), means that the initial cancer has spread (metastasised) to other parts of the body. According to METUPUK, the charity that Jo founded after her second diagnosis, up to 30% of people with breast cancer in the UK will go on to develop MBC. Currently, it’s incurable and a person’s average life span after diagnosis is 2-3 years.
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