In November 2011, my life changed forever. Things had been going great for me! I truly loved my job for the very first time in my life, I was about to puchase my first property, I was super fit, had amazing friends and felt absolutely incredible.

A large lump in my left breast - which I'd had since my early 20's - suddenly felt different. It had been examined several times, and I guess I'd become complacent, fuelled by several clinicians in the past dismissing my concerns with throwaway lines like "women your age with no family history don't get breast cancer". I was monitoring the lump, hoping it would go back to normal with my regular cycle, but on a lovely afternoon at the beach in Williamstown, I dicovered a strange lump in my neck as well, and started to freak out.

After a whirlwind of tests and appointments and more stress than I thought I was capable of coping with, I had to call my Mum with the dreaded news "my doctor thinks I have cancer". The waiting for scans and biopsy results is frightful, but it's nothing in comparison to the hell of telling your love ones that you have a disease. One with a word laden with more fear than any other.

The real hard work began in December 2011, with 8 rounds of chemo often called the "red devil", which is meant to wreak havoc on your body. I was told it would have a 70% chance of working, and the aim was to shrink my tumours (I ended up have a group of small tumours, rather than one large one) enough so they could be operated on. Thankfully, the chemotherapy worked, and my body coped better than most on the same treatment. In the time, however, that my body was recovering from chemo in preparation from surgery, the tumours grew, and were once again inoperable. I had just started to feel better, and get a little bit of fluff growing on my head, and had to start new, different chemo, which was worse, but really successful.

After almost a year of chemo, I had surgery in September 2012, and it's amazing to me that something I was so scared of at the start of my journey became a huge relief after it had been done.

Surgery was followed by intensive Radiotherapy. At this time I started chatting to Christy, who I'd met through our amazing mutual friend Sharon Kerr years earlier, and had recently discovered we were both going thorugh similar, annoying junk.

My journey is going to be ongoing for the rest of my life - or at least until they find some new drugs or an elusive cure. Little tumours in my bone marrow and tiny spots in my liver are being controlled by ongoing chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, but all in all it's not that bad. I'm trying as much as I can to enjoy my life, and make the most of the fresh perspective I have, as well as trying to give something back. Legacy is a scary and morbid thing to think about, but it feels a pretty important for a single lady with brains and means to do "good stuff" with her time.

I look forward to your support! You can keep up to date with my progress at http://francescamaree.wordpress.com/

Love Frances