'Oh my God I've got cancer': Perth mum's devastating news 18 hours after giving birth
A Perth mother has described the devastating moment she discovered she had stage three breast cancer, 18 hours after giving birth to her second child.
Farrah Millar and her partner Brad had their first little girl after four years of IVF treatment – and fell pregnant again just five months later.
It was around that time that the 37-year-old discovered a lump under her arm and in her left breast, but she didn’t do anything about it.
“I was breastfeeding and so many changes go on in the breasts,' Ms Millar told Daily Mail.
'I was so busy looking after my dad because he had had a heart attack and I was looking after my 14-month-old so I never really thought about the lumps.'
But a week before she was due to have a C-section, she spoke to her midwife about it and was sent for an ultra sound and biopsies.
Mum wins cancer battle thanks to 'wonder drug'
'Why my mummy?': Heartbreaking video shows boy reading mum's book to help him understand cancer
She got the results the day after she had her little boy and the moment she saw the doctor in her room with two nurses, she knew.
"Oh my God I've got cancer," she said.
“It was this big festival of tears and questions and shock really,'”Ms Millar told the Daily Mail.
“I was just processing everything... I had this amazing little boy who was such a miracle and this amazing little girl and my brain just left the building. I started going on this ridiculous train of terrible thoughts.
“All I could think was that I might never get to see them grow up. I'd had these amazing babies and we had tried for so long and then to fall pregnant again we were simply blown away.”
That was on March 30th. On April 18 Farrah had her first chemotherapy treatment and, with four more months of it to go and then radiation therapy, her odds of beating the cancer are high: 72 percent.
But she says her feelings swing from feeling confident to being afraid. Having set up a Facebook group called #FarrahsArmy, she has had an outpouring of support from others and many welcome packages that have helped her through her dark days.
As the mother-of-two battles on and looks forward to a day when she is healthier and can “enjoy having these amazing kids,” she wants other women to learn from her story and get checked.
She wants them to remember that those pap tests and checks that so many admit to neglecting “are very important”.
