Women urged to ‘check yourself regularly!’
BRAVE Photographer raising awareness of breast cancer
Popular photographer Lorraine Teevan is pushing for greater breast cancer awareness among women of all ages.
Lorraine had a mammogram in February 2023 due to a family history with the disease. Two of her sisters - Marie and Joanne - and an aunt were all diagnosed with breast cancer in recent years. All three sisters, at time of diagnosis, were aged in their mid to early 50s.
“I’m the third [diagnosed] in the last four years,” says Lorraine, whose cancer grew “very aggressively” from “nothing in February to quite advanced by the end of June”.
Lorraine felt she had done everything right, “ticked all the boxes”, when having referred herself to the Family Breast Check Clinic because of the “history” there. “I’d two sisters and an aunt diagnosed, and so I had a mammogram through them in February. I was completely clear.”
Four months later, however, the Belturbet native woke to find a “sore cyst” under her armpit. This was checked out by a GP “who wasn’t too concerned” but it still “niggled at me”, explains Lorraine.
“I’d been very tired, but who isn’t these days, but I felt something wasn’t right.”
One of her sister Joanne’s oncologists saw Lorraine.
“It was all very serendipitous. I had rang Joanne and she just so happened to be outside her oncologist's. That was a Tuesday, I was seen on a Thursday, and diagnosed straight away.”
Lorraine spoke to the Celt just a few days before a scheduled operation on Wednesday, January 10.
She’d already completed a full course of chemotherapy, and post-operation will undergo radium treatment.
Lorraine’s message is clear: “Check yourself regularly!”
Even though she had been examining herself, Lorraine explains: “I’d been checking my breasts but I wasn’t checking around the sides. When I was diagnosed, my cancer was round about my side, which I wouldn’t have been aware of. And I wasn’t checking under my arm pit either.”
Despite it all, Lorraine is aware that it is a “staged process” and places her faith in the hands of her medical team.
“I don’t question anything they tell me. I just get on with it. It’s incredible.”
Lorraine hasn’t been alone on this journey. Aside from the strength friends and family give her, she has brought to the hospital each time a teddy bear named ‘Wee Jim Bob’, manufactured from old shirts belonging to her late father Jim, who sadly passed away in December 2020 aged 86 years. ‘Wee Jim Bob’ was gifted to Lorraine by Joanne and her mother Mary.
“He has come everywhere with me. I know that sounds bananas but I get great comfort from him. I was very attached to my dad, and God I missed him so much. You’re not allowed to bring anyone in with you doing chemo any more, so it was like having someone there with me.”
Lorraine is hugely thankful to everyone who has been so supportive since her diagnosis, including staff Dublin’s Beacon Hospital and a close friend who has set up a GoFundMe page to help meet the cost of treatment.
To date, the fundraiser is close to achieving the half-way mark of its €5,000 goal, and Lorraine intends to donate half the amount to Cuan Cancer Care in Cavan.
What Lorraine finds toughest in her battle against cancer is how it has curtailed her ability to “work and meet people”.
“That’s what I miss most. That’s been the biggest challenge, to keep the head going, because I’d always be out and about and, through this, I haven’t been able to. I haven’t worked in six months. I find that very difficult. But I have to keep going.”
She concludes by saying: “I hope to be back behind the camera before too long photographing the wonderful people and events of Cavan and capturing history.”