By CASEY NEILL
THE time and date are etched in Tracey Ryan’s mind – 10.13am on 24 February, 2010.
This was the moment a surgeon told the Cranbourne North mum she had breast cancer.
“He came from behind his desk and pulled a chair up next to me and held my hand,” she said.
“He said ‘I’m so sorry sweetheart to tell you, you’ve got breast cancer’.”
It’s now only a matter of time before the disease takes the 50-year-old’s life, but she’s making the most of the days she has left with husband Andrew, daughter Erin, 27, and son Leigh, 16.
Tracey wrote a bucket list in 2012 as a joke, but has since ticked off all but four items.
She completed a tandem skydive on her wedding anniversary last year, climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge with Leigh late last year, and on 24 July received a makeover from Westfield Fountain Gate and Myer.
A limousine picked up Tracey and Leigh and delivered them to a red carpet entrance.
“I just started to cry before I even got out of the car,” she said.
A facial, hair makeover, manicure, personal style session, makeup and gifts followed.
“I can’t get over the generosity of complete strangers, it was unbelievable,” she said.
“It’s just … words can’t explain it. I can’t say thank you to them enough.”
One gift came from catering company Going Gourmet, which will supply food for a party to thank Tracey’s family and friends – a bucket list item.
Also on the list are a trip to Ireland to say goodbye to family and friends, seeing Erin walk down the aisle on 20 September, and finding a cure for breast cancer.
“I don’t want anyone else or their families to have to go through this,” she said.
“It’s not just my disease, it’s my family’s disease. They’ve walked side by side with me every second of the day.”
Tracey works with Pink Hope, Breast Cancer Network Australia and the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and is the director of a charity fellow breast cancer suffers set up to give back.
“Because it’s such a financially crippling disease, we give them up to $300 for a breast cancer-related appointment,” she said.
She’s also encouraging women and men to “check their boobs”.
“There’s more and more young girls getting diagnosed with breast cancer and they’re getting fobbed off because the doctors think they’re too young,” she said.
“Don’t take no for an answer. We know our bodies.”
Leigh is chronically ill, and it was during a stay with him at the Royal Children’s Hospital that Tracey first knew something was wrong.
“I turned over on the sofa bed and I got a really bad pain in my right breast,” she said.
“It really took my breath away.”
GP appointments, mammograms, ultrasounds and a breast cancer diagnosis swiftly followed.
“I went and had the tumour removed and the nodes removed,” she said.
“Then I had chemo. Then I got another lump in the same breast after the chemo, so I said ‘take them both off, I’ve had enough’.
“I had a reconstruction done straight away.
“That’s when I found out it had gone into my spine.”
The disease progressed to her ribs, and late in 2012 she started coughing up blood.
“It had gone to my lungs,” she said.
“On Mother’s Day last year I found out it had also gone to my liver.
“I go and have my cries in the shower, and Andrew and I have our cries.
“Then we dust ourselves off.
“We’ve been dealt another blow, we’ve just got to get on with it.”
Tracey had a stroke when she was in her early twenties and had major brain surgery 12 months before her cancer diagnosis.
“You either get into the foetal position and cry and go ‘woe is me’ or you deal with it,” she said.
“That’s pretty much the way I am. I just get on with it.”
