She also had a lumpectomy to remove the lump from the breast skin.
Nicola PurdieThe plan was to deliver the baby at 32 weeks, at the end of August, but even in the midst of the urgency for treatment, she had an eye to her son’s future.
“I think it was 26 August and I said ‘can I put my teacher’s hat on now and push it to the week after’.
“My husband was like ‘what?’ But I said ‘I’ve got to give him the best chance’.
“So we waited until the first Monday in September and he was born at 32 weeks and six days.”
Fraser was in the neonatal unit for three weeks. “He went from strength to strength and that made things easier as well because of what I was dealing with.
“I don’t know how I would have been if he was poorly as well.”
Nicola started chemotherapy two weeks after giving birth and would go from the baby unit upstairs to have her treatment and then straight back down to her son.
She had 16 rounds of chemo which took her all the way through to the beginning of February.
Initially the oncology team had not been sure what operation to suggest as Nicola had multiple cancer sites in the right breast area and a tumour in one lymph node.
The most likely option was removal and an LD (latissimus dorsi) flap, which involves swinging a muscle and skin from the back to cover the area left behind by the removed breast, but leaving the area flat in her case.
Reconstruction using an implant on the right side instead would not have been possible as so much skin had to be removed, there would not be enough to cover it, or to withstand damage from subsequent radiation treatment.
However, Nicola’s aunt had had the LD flap operation and she knew it came with an arduous recovery process and possibly reduced range of movement – not an option for her as the mother of two small children.
She also knew she wanted “symmetry” – either two breasts or none.
It was while talking to her sisters she initially had the idea that, if she did end up having both breasts removed, why not use the skin from the healthy left breast to cover the larger affected area on the right.
But it was only once she was in the consulting room with consultant plastic, reconstructive and breast surgeon Reza Arya, that the idea of moving the whole breast intact dawned.
SBUHBShe realised it would allow her to create a right breast and have reconstructive surgery on the left side using an implant because there was enough skin left in situ from the first operation in 2020.