Alison McLaughlin proudly displays a pink ribbon she has tattooed on her right wrist.
It is a powerful symbol which marks the 52-year-old’s successful battle with breast cancer.
The mum-of-one from Stirling decided to get the inking in August – just months after completing treatment for the disease.
“I have never had a tattoo before in my life and then I decided I was going to get one,” she explains.
“It is shaped like a love heart – one side is the breast cancer pink ribbon and the other side is black.
“I have it on the wrist of my right hand because I had cancer in my right breast.
“I had the tattoo done in August because I had to wait until I had finished my treatment.”
When did Alison first realise something was wrong?
In September 2022, Alison, who was 50 at the time, had been on holiday at a caravan in Ayr with her husband Paul.
She was packing up her things to come home and she was giving him a bag to put in the car when she felt some pain.
“I then put my hand to my right breast and felt something.
“When I got home I decided to have a proper look at it. I thought it was maybe a cyst.
“But it was a strange sensation and something I had never felt before.”
After showing it to her husband, they thought it would be best for her to get it checked.
The next day Alison, who works as a dispensing consultant at an optician’s, called her doctor’s surgery and explained she had found a lump.
She insisted on being seen as soon as possible and was given an appointment to see the nurse practitioner the following day.
After seeing the nurse practitioner, Alison was referred to a clinic at Forth Valley Royal Hospital.
Having a mammogram and ultrasound
At the hospital Alison had her first mammogram and then an ultrasound.
“I had the mammogram but when they took me for the ultrasound I could feel the atmosphere changing,” she says.
“They never told me they had found anything or seen anything.
“But when they told me they were going to take a biopsy, I had a feeling there must have been something there.
“Yet still in my head I was thinking it will be fine, it won’t be my turn, I won’t be that number.”
Alison was then told she would be called back in a fortnight’s time for the results.
“The next two weeks was the most horrific time of my life because you are just waiting.
“I don’t think I slept much during that time and my brain was going at 100 miles an hour.”
Being diagnosed with breast cancer
In October 2022, Alison returned to the hospital for her results.
And Paul, 59, and her daughter Kerry, 24, went with her.
Initially she went into a room speak to the consultant on her own.
And this was when he told Alison that she had triple negative breast cancer which is aggressive.
She then asked for her husband and daughter to join her.
Alison continues: “The consultant went through a lot of information but my body was in shock. I was shaking.
“It just felt so horrible and raw.”
She began chemotherapy to shrink the tumour and was due to have eight sessions.
“When I started chemo the tumour was nearly 45 millimetres. I was told it was an aggressive tumour and was growing really quickly because of the type of cancer it was.
“But having chemotherapy managed to shrink it to 11 millimetres.”
However, after the fourth session, Alison developed sepsis so her treatment had to be paused and she spent more than a week in hospital recovering.
After a break, she was then put on a lower dose of chemotherapy.
When did Alison have breast cancer surgery?
On April 25 2023 at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, Alison had a lumpectomy to remove the tumour from her breast.
The operation was a success, but because the surgeon hadn’t got a clear enough margin around the cancer, Alison had to have a second operation on May 29.
This time all the lymph nodes under her right arm were removed.
“It was a bit of a shock when I found out I had to have another operation.
“I did ask if I would need to have a mastectomy.
“But my surgeon said it would be the last resort if it comes back positive again.
“I wanted to be able to keep my breasts if I could.
“This is why he said he would take all the lymph nodes away.”
The last part of treatment
In August last year Alison had the last part of her treatment which saw her having 19 sessions of radiotherapy followed by chemotherapy tablets over 18 weeks.
And she finally completed this in March this year.
“I had to have the radiotherapy treatment at Monklands Hospital in Lanarkshire and luckily I was able to get patient transport from Dial-A-Journey.
“The bus driver was called Wendy and she was amazing. She kept us all going with her banter, humour and positivity.
“I made some lifelong friends from the journeys I had on that bus.”
Support from family and friends
In May this year Alison was invited to officially launch the Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life in Stirling.
She says it was a very emotional experience and she attended the event with Paul and Kerry.
She credits her family for all their support from her diagnosis through to completion of her treatment.
“When you are going through cancer treatment your world comes down to the closest people around you and that was my husband and my daughter.
“I couldn’t have got through this without both of them.”
Alison says going through treatment for breast cancer has changed her perspective on life.
“After everything I have had to go through I look at the world in a different way now.
“There were days when I had to just sit in the house because I wasn’t able to go anywhere and it was the simplest things that meant so much.
“For instance my best friend Mhairi Banks would leave something nice on the doorstep like my favourite crisps or a bunch of flowers.
“Or when we could meet up we would just sit and have a coffee.
“Things like that really meant a lot.”
‘The simple things mean so much’
She continues: “I have realised how lucky I am with the people I have around me.
“And I see the simple things in life are worth so much more than the material things.
“People talk about winning the lottery.
“But I feel I am already rich in so many ways because I have my family, my friends, my job and I was able to go on holiday again this year with my husband and daughter.
“Things like that are way more important than a lot of other stuff.”
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