‘ Incurable’ cancer hell days after twins’ birth
A YOUNG mum was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer just five days after giving birth to twins.
Lorna Whiston had them early to receive treatment – but within a week doctors said there was nothing more that they could do for her. The former customer services worker does not know how long she will have left with five- week- old Reuben and Arya, and son Mason, three.
Lorna, 26, is now urging young women to check their breasts to stop similar tragedies. She said: “You don’t ever think it would happen to someone in this age group, but you never really know.
Checked
“It’s hard. I have days where it’s all I can think about; whether Mason and the twins will even remember me because they’re so young.”
Lorna, of Crewe, Cheshire first faced cancer in 2019 and had months of chemotherapy. She said: “I was playing with Mason... and he hit my boob. I felt it and found a lump, but I thought it was just hormonal because I was only 25 at the time and on my period.”
The family went on holiday but Lorna was checked on returning and given the diagnosis. She had a double mastectomy with reconstruction, froze her eggs and had chemotherapy, before ringing a bell at Manchester’s Christie Hospital to mark the end of her
treatment. As she turned around, boyfriend Jonny Parkes, 30, was on one knee and proposing.
Last summer Lorna found she was pregnant with twins, but five months in she became breathless and an X- ray found a mass near her collarbone.
“I immediately thought the worst. It’s hard to hear it a second time once you’ve been through it all,” she said. The babies were delivered a week after her biopsy. Later she was told her breast cancer had returned – but it was at Stage 4 and incurable.
Lorna is having treatment but said: “I want to marry Jonny. We originally cancelled in order to have the twins. We really want to put a deposit down on a house to make some memories.”
An appeal by Lorna’s friends and family on GoFundMe has raised more than £ 20,000 for the family.