It was like lightning had struck twice
When Jan Jeffery and her daughter Fern Maxted were diagnosed with breast cancer within two months of each other, it came as a devastating shock. Here they share their story
Stepping into the consultant’s room, Jan Jeffery was nervous. It was July 2022 and, then aged 58, she was waiting to hear the results she knew could change everything.
When the doctor finally spoke, Jan’s world stopped turning. It was breast cancer. But the consultant wasn’t diagnosing Jan. She was speaking about her daughter Fern Maxted, then 34, sat in the room beside her.
“I could see the shock on Fern’s face, the realisation that nothing would be the same again,” says Jan.
It was a feeling she knew all too well. The very next day Jan would start chemotherapy of her own.
Because in a terrible twist of fate this mother and daughter were destined to fight the same awful disease together.
According to Breast Cancer Now around 55,000 women and 400 men are diagnosed with the disease every year in the UK.
But what are the chances that both mother and daughter would face the same disease at exactly the same time? “It was like lightning had struck twice,” says Jan, a teacher from Bethersden in Kent.
The pair have always been close. “Fern was always the loveliest girl, easy going and sociable. From the start we had a similar positive outlook on life and the same sense of humour,” Jan says.
In 2014 they became even closer. Jan and husband Colin, 63, knocked down a cowshed next to their house and two new homes were built, one by Fern, and one by her brother Luke, 33.
Jan says: “Fern and I would see each other all the time and when she and husband Mark, 46, had their three children, Presley, now 13, Isabella, 11, and Matilda, six, it was lovely to be right next door.”
Then in July 2021, Jan found a lump in her right breast, which doctors said was a cyst. But it continued to grow so in May 2022, she returned to her GP. A couple of weeks later tests confirmed it was cancer.
Jan says: “I was in shock. I wasn’t ready to go yet. But the lifeboat I clung to was that this was happening to me and not the children or grandchildren.”
Jan told Fern immediately, who was devastated.
“All you ever want is for your mum to be OK, to take away any fears and pain she might have. And I couldn’t,” says Fern. Jan was diagnosed with Stage 2, Grade 3 breast cancer, and told that with chemotherapy and a lumpectomy, she’d have a
90 per cent chance of a five year-plus survival.
And another bombshell was on its way.
“Two weeks after my diagnosis I was sitting in the garden with Fern when she told me she’d found a lump,” says Jan.
Fern adds, “I’d checked my own breasts after mum was diagnosed and had found what felt like cooked cauliflower.”
Two weeks later, Jan came along to hear the results of Fern’s biopsy.
“Hearing it confirmed was like stepping into a parallel universe,” says Fern.
Jan agrees. “The horror of realising your child is facing this disease wiped away any fear that I had for myself. My cancer became almost irrelevant to me. I would have done anything to take it all on, to spare Fern whatever was to come.”
Despite a further scan revealing that it hadn’t spread, Fern was told she had Grade 2, Stage 3C breast cancer, which is the final stage before the cancer is incurable.
As they each began their treatment – with chemotherapy for Jan in July and Fern with a mastectomy in August – they both faced huge emotional struggles.
“Feeling like I was a burden to mum was the hardest part. She was poorly and I couldn’t help her, because I was having to go through my own treatment,” says Fern.
After Fern’s mastectomy, while waiting for a space to open up for chemotherapy, a nurse told her about a mum who’d been in a few days before.
“She’d been begging for her daughter to have her spot because she didn’t want her to have to wait. I realised that it was my mum. It was heartbreaking,” says Fern. “She would sacrifice herself for me in an instant.”
For Jan, watching the impact of the chemo on her daughter when it did begin in September, was brutal.
“Chemo is hard,” she says. “I was off work for a year, but chemotherapy hit Fern even harder. I saw her become thinner and quieter, and could see the fear in her eyes, the thought that this might be the end. But still she would come over to see me and try to be her usually bubbly, positive self.”
Jan tried to match her daughter’s upbeat outlook. “I’d hold it together during the day and save my tears for the middle of the night,” she says.
Happy times became the hardest to deal with. “Christmas Day with the family was both wonderful and painful. I’d look around and think, is this going to be the last time we’re all together?” says Jan.
But despite the pain and trauma, their joint experience brought them closer than ever.
“Cancer treatment can be isolating,” says Jan. “But we had a best friend who knew exactly what it was like, from the hair loss to the sickness. That was comforting, even though we both desperately wished the other wasn’t on the same journey.”
After surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Fern is now in remission, while continuing to take a drug which targets the proteins of cancer cells. And, after chemotherapy and a partial mastectomy Jan is now in remission too, taking long- term hormone therapy and waiting for a full mastectomy and reconstruction this May.
Both mum and daughter say the journey has left them changed forever.
“I never take anything for granted,” says Jan. “And my love for and admiration for Fern is greater than it was before, which just didn’t seem possible.”
Fern agrees. “Nobody ever wants to go through cancer. But it has shown me just how incredible mum is, how strong our bond is, and how unbelievably lucky I am to have her.”
‘‘ I would have done anything to take it all on to spare Fern what was to come