Mother undergoing preventive chemotherapy urges Kate Middleton to ‘stay positive’

A two-time cancer survivor who underwent preventive chemotherapy has urged Kate Middleton to “stay positive” as she battles the disease.

In 2011, Terri Grice, 50, felt severe pain under her armpits and a “small pea-sized lump” under her right breast, but ignored the symptoms.

Fortunately, her late husband Mark made an appointment with her GP and the diagnosis was breast cancer.

The mother-of-three, from Chester, began a long journey to recovery that began with surgery to remove the tumor, a tumor removal and then a course of “adjuvant chemotherapy” to ensure her body was cancer-free.

On March 22, Princess Kate revealed her cancer diagnosis to the world, saying that she was undergoing “preventative chemotherapy” after the cancer was discovered during abdominal surgery in January. It’s unclear what type of cancer Kate has.

Although “preventive chemotherapy” is not a recognized medical term, doctors use the term “adjuvant chemotherapy.”

This is a type of chemotherapy that reduces the risk of cancer coming back by killing cancer cells that have broken away from the main tumor before surgery.

As the mother of young children at the time, Terri could understand Kate’s struggle to open up about her illness to her children, Charlotte, eight, Louis, five, and George, 10.

she told independent: “It’s been a horrible road. I had adjuvant chemotherapy for six months and I was in really bad shape, I lost my hair, I couldn’t eat.

“When I first heard the news about Kate I was of course very upset, she faced a lot of stigma and she needed her privacy.

“No one knows what it’s like unless you’ve been through it. The diagnosis is scary enough, let alone the treatment.

“She seems very positive and you have to stay positive, that’s the only way to get through this. I just want to say [to Kate] Please stay positive – and look at your children – this is not a death sentence. “

Terri said her husband Mark was her “support” throughout her treatment and that he and her eldest son David, now 30, had been by her side when she received the devastating news. She is also mum to Callum, now 27, and Marcus, 22.

She added: “They told me I had cancer and I just wanted to run away.”

Terri worked as a medical secretary at Clatterbridge Cancer Clinic, the same clinic where she received treatment.

“I knew everyone but it was still scary and I remember sitting in bed on the first day of chemo,” she added. “When I was doing a blood test and I saw a lady with no hair, I started to panic. I just thought. ‘I don’t want this.’ “

The mother may be able to relate to Kate, who has publicly spoken out about turning to her partner Prince William for support.

“Mark was more worried than I was – he was there for every chemo session – he would stay with me for the whole three hours,” she said.

After six months of chemotherapy, radiation and toloxifene, a drug used to treat premenopausal women, Terri survived her first battle.

Three years after Terry’s recovery, Mark died of kidney failure in April 2015 at the age of 42.

But 13 years after her first diagnosis, Terri noticed her skin was “binding” around the same breast and another pea-sized lump had appeared in a different location. Preparing for the worst, she made an appointment for a mammogram in 2020.

A biopsy revealed she had breast cancer for a second time and this time she had to face the horrific hospital ward alone without her husband due to Covid-19 restrictions.

This time the tumor was 83mm in size and Terri had to undergo three months of chemotherapy followed by a total mastectomy of her right breast.

While waiting for surgery, she met Carrie Pritchard, 57, who caught Terri’s eye wearing sneakers with breasts printed on them and they quickly became good friends.

Carrie, also from Chester, often has cysts in her breasts so was not concerned when she discovered a lump in her right breast, but a routine mammogram in August 2020 revealed an 8cm tumor in her left breast.

she told independent: “There was a new consultant who wanted to start over and he looked at my right breast and found a cyst – she said, you do realize you have a huge lump in your left breast.

“I’d had dozens of mammograms, but when they immediately called me back for another exam, alarm bells started ringing.

“They said they found a little bit of calcification, which could mean an early sign of cancer. I went in for an ultrasound scan and they told me they suspected it was cancer. I literally burst into tears.”

After six months of chemotherapy and 12 months of Herceptin injections, Carrie was in remission. She then had a mastectomy, which removed her breast, followed by a course of radiation therapy, and now has a tattoo where her breast once was.

The mother-of-two, Alex, 31, and Joshua, 33, also spoke of Kate’s struggle in sharing the diagnosis with her children.

She said: “It’s scary to tell your children… that your life’s job is to protect your children while they are at risk of losing you. But it’s not a death sentence – the prognosis is quite good, especially if the cancer is caught early if.

“I’m healthy, well-trained and never eat junk food. It can happen to anyone – no matter where you are in society, even with the best health treatments in the world.”

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “On Friday 22 March, the day the Princess was diagnosed, our cancer information page was visited more than 200,000 times. This is up from the day before the announcement. Compared to last year, this figure increased by 15.2%.

“People should talk to their GP if they notice something is not normal for them or won’t go away. Catching cancer at an early stage means treatment is more likely to be successful.”