WARRIOR WOMEN
Two sisters, diagnosed with breast cancer just weeks apart, found an amazing product that helped them during their treatment and are now manufacturing it to help others
Sisters Aisling and Margaret Cunningham have always looked out for each other. Growing up in a big Irish family in Liverpool in the UK, then migrating to Australia, the siblings shared the secrets of childhood and teenage dreams, listening to Wham! in Aisling’s bedroom and swooning over dreamy George Michael.
They’ve supported each other through their studies, careers, and later, single parenting; their inner-city Brisbane townhouses next door to each other so their kids can duck in and out of their blended families and lives.
So when Margaret, now 46, was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2020, Aisling, now 50, “dropped everything” to look after the little sister she calls Mags.
From taking her to medical appointments, to helping Mags’s kids (Thomas, now 12, and Thea, now 7) with their homework, alongside her own daughter Frankie (now 10), to keeping up the rituals of family dinners each night, Aisling was determined to make Mags’s chemotherapy, lumpectomy and radiation as painless as possible. Together – as always – the sisters worked out a plan around Mags’s treatment, scheduling school pick-up times, sports dropoffs, play dates and meals, as well as muchneeded sleep time for Mags, exhausted from her treatments.
What they didn’t plan for was Aisling, a make-up artist and graphic designer, being diagnosed with breast cancer just six weeks after her sister.
It was, Mags, a former purchasing officer in the health sector, notes wryly, “a bit of a shock”.
Non-genetic based breast cancer in siblings is not common; it is less common still to have siblings diagnosed just weeks apart. But the sisters had very different cancers and treatment paths.
At the time of this interview in Aisling’s Ascot townhouse, Mags is recovering from her second hip replacement, while Aisling is in postoperation mode from having her ovaries removed.
Both of Mags’s hips needed replacing after her chemotherapy treatment stopped the blood flowing to the bone, causing it to collapse.
Aisling chose to have her ovaries removed to halt the production of oestrogen, her cancer being what’s known as “oestrogen positive” or highly receptive to oestrogen.
Mags – diagnosed on August 10, 2020 – had stage 2/borderline 3, oestrogen receptor positive (ER+), lobular cancer, which begins in the milk producing glands (lobules) of the breast. Her treatment involved 22 chemotherapy sessions from August to December. On January 12, Mags underwent a lumpectomy where surgeons removed lymph nodes and tissue, a LICAP, where they filled the void left by the node removal, and had a second breast surgery on January 23. In February that year she began three months of radiation followed by a left hip replacement in December. In May this year, she underwent a right hip replacement.
Aisling – diagnosed on September 18, 2020 – had stage 2, ER +, ductal cancer, which begins in the milk ducts of the breast. Her treatment involved a double mastectomy on October 19 that year, followed by chemotherapy throughout November and December. She has also had a full axillary clearance, which removes all the lymph nodes in designated areas. In May this year she had her ovaries removed (known as a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy).
All of which is to say that the sisters have been through hell; the silver lining, they say, is that they’ve been through it together – when Aisling was told she had breast cancer in a quiet room in Brisbane’s Mater Hospital, Mags was one floor up having chemotherapy in another.
“I had driven Mags there, and I was meant to drive her home also, but when the doctor told me I also had breast cancer, I was so upset I couldn’t drive, so Mags had to drive me home!” Aisling says.
For her part, Mags says she knew something was the matter when Aisling was late picking her up from chemo. “When I saw her, she was just shaking,” Mags remembers, “and I guess from that moment on, we were in it together.”
Asked what that looks like, or feels like, the sisters later write an email after the interview explaining: “You asked us about supporting each other and we thought of something today. A friend of ours, who has also been through breast cancer, described her experience as being on a stage and everyone was supporting and cheering her on. But she felt really alone on the stage. For us being able to experience this together, we never felt alone.”
They also never lost their sense of humour nor love of life. Their twin townhouses are filled with light and laughter, kids (and dogs) coming in and out, and a ready supply of excellent chocolate biscuits.
The sisters say they also have never felt alone because, along with each other, their children, their parents Ailbhe and Frank Cunningham and three other siblings, and the parents from their children’s school, Our Lady Help of Christians in Hendra, “went above and beyond”, Aisling smiles.
“The mums from school had already started a meal train for Mags, so when they heard about me, they went into overdrive. We just had the most beautiful meals delivered, and they all kept an eye out for our kids, the teachers as well. One mother actually dropped off some home-cooked muffins she had made on her way to her own breast surgery. People were cooking and preparing lunches and dinners for two adults and three children. Our mum and dad were so amazing too, just so caring and helpful, and it can’t have been easy for them having not one but two daughters undergoing cancer treatment at the same time,” Aisling says.
The family and community putting their arms around them also meant that the sisters could concentrate on the most important people in their lives – their children.
“Not having to cook, or work out driving timetables meant that when we were with them, we could really be with them, or if one of us was sick from treatment or just really exhausted, the other one could look after them.”
In short, the sisters, with the help of those who love them, became a breast cancer tag team, helpful, they say, when the “brain fog” set in.
“We both have the worst memories,” Mags laughs.
“Chemo brain, plus menopause (brought on by the drop in oestrogen) equals the worst brain fog you can imagine. So it’s lucky that we had each other, so that when one of us said, ‘Now where did I put that … whatever’ the other one could help.”
“Not always though,” Aisling laughs. Laughter has always been the sisters’ best defence against the ravages breast cancer has brought upon their bodies and minds. But there have, of course, been dark moments for both women, most often borne not out of anxiety or concern for themselves, but for each other.
“I remember when Mags first started getting pain in her hip, the first time, she was just so anxious,” Aisling recalls.
“Because we had to wait for the results over a weekend, so you’ve got a whole weekend to worry about it, and think the worst. I secretly thought the worst too, I thought she had bone cancer to be honest, but of course I didn’t say that to her.
“Mags was obviously thinking the same thing too because she was really upset and agitated, so I was just ringing any number I could find at the hospital trying to get results for her. And you know it’s funny how your perspective changes, because when we heard the results, we were like, ‘Oh my God, it’s only a dead hip! Hurrah, it’s just a hip replacement.’”
And even though Aisling says she worried that she “did not have the right words” to comfort her younger sister when she was diagnosed, Mags says the opposite is true, as she tells her older sister.
“That first weekend when I was diagnosed, there were a few tears and on my part just anxiousness about what would happen to my kids if I was not here to look after them and you just pulled me back from catastrophising again and again. You were very calm, you kept saying that you have to work with the information you have right now, and you reassured me constantly that you would always be there for my kids, and you are.”
Mags smiles, adding, “Aisling is a mum to my kids when I can’t be, and I feel pretty lucky to have that person in their lives.”
The sisters have also both seen each other through the worst of their cancer’s side effects; nausea, vomiting, mouth ulcers, extreme dehydration, insomnia, pain, post-op site pain, tenderness and, of course, the mental challenges that come with diagnosis and treatment. But here’s another surprising thing that’s happened to the sisters, out of all that pain and anxiety, they found a way to keep themselves busy, help themselves – and others.
Lula. The name means “Warrior”. It’s also the name of the Cunningham sisters’ range of eye masks, developed during their treatments, first when Mags was searching for something to soothe her tired and extremely dry eyes.
“I was searching the internet for something to help relax me, I was looking for a little selfcare product because I couldn’t afford $100 massages,” Mags says. “I came across these masks, it’s a Japanese invention, and I ordered some, tried one and it was just bliss.”
The warming eye masks used the same method/ingredients used in the pouches skiers use to keep their hands warm on the slopes. The heat is released when the mask is removed from its packaging and meets the air. It’s then placed over the eyes and looped around the ears.
Mags shared her enthusiasm for the product with Aisling, and the sisters decided to manufacture and brand their own range.
“We did it when we weren’t sick,” Aisling smiles, “We’d both be lying down unwell, but when we got well, we’d get back up and get into it.”
“It took a long time,” Mags adds, “because our brains were so scrambled but we knew what we wanted and we eventually found a manufacturer in China, although all other aspects of the business, the packaging and storage and shipping is done here.”
Finessing their product, the sisters self-tested it, both the warmth level and the scents, eventually choosing three fragrances; jasmine, rose and lavender as well as an unscented mask.
“Instead of giving someone a bunch of flowers when they are ill, or need to rest, or have a migraine or are post treatment, this is like giving someone a warm hug,” Aisling says.
“Once we perfected the masks we were trying out so many different names, and then we heard the name Lula, and we loved it. But when we heard it translates as warrior, that was it, because we felt like warriors during treatment and we also think every woman is a warrior, whether she has cancer or not, or whether she is a mother or not. Women carry so much on their shoulders, and so we felt this was the perfect name.”
It has also proved to be the perfect product for anyone – men or women – looking for a little downtime, a little closed-eye moment of escape.
Since launching on July 13 last year, the sisters have sold more than 15,000 boxes, equating to $350,000 in sales. They have plans to expand to other products, but they say they are in “no hurry”. Cancer, they say, teaching them the value of going at their own pace.
They are also their own best customers, both recovering from their recent surgeries they lay on their couches, their warm scented masks on their eyes. A warrior mask apiece for two warrior women.
When I saw her, she was just shaking, and I guess from that moment on, we were in it together