“If you don’t look after your own health, nobody else will.”
Dee Doherty was 31-years-old when she received her breast cancer diagnosis.
A mother living in Wicklow with her two small children, she discovered that she had stage three cancer in December 2017.
This meant that she had to undergo chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and have a mastectomy to combat the tumours invading her chest wall.
Dee had started a YouTube channel prior to her diagnosis, sharing unboxing videos, pregnancy advice vlogs, and hair tutorials.
After she was informed that she had breast cancer she made the decision to keep making videos, going from “the girl with the hair” to “the girl with no hair.”
“When the diagnosis came, I knew I would continue to document the journey for myself,” she says.
“In my first video I said I didn’t know what it would become, I never knew how much it was going to help cancer patients and their families, but I am so happy it has.”
Dee has shared a series of videos on her channel since her diagnosis. She chats everything from tips for dealing with the side effects of chemo, to how to fill in your brows during treatment, to how to tie a headscarf.
Her videos have been viewed almost 250,000 times with the most recent one ‘Update: one year after cancer’, shared on her channel just one month ago.
Dee says that her diagnosis taught her a lot about love, friendship, and family – and that although the year and a half of chemotherapy was incredibly tough, she remains grateful that her outlook on life has changed.
“I am much more positive now,” she says. “I’m more confident and I will never allow myself to be treated the way I was before my diagnosis, ever again.”
“I learned to let go of the trivial things and for the first time in my life I no longer sweat the small things (…) It’s as if I got a lifetime of experience in the space of a year.”
However, Dee is aware that her life isn’t all “sunshine and roses.”
For the next 10 years, she’ll need to take oral chemotherapy every day and monthly injectable anti-hormonal implants.
Her immune system isn’t what it once was, she is more prone to illness, her body has changed, and she won’t be able to have any more children.
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“I am not who I used to be physically,” she says. “I was 31-years-old and thrown into full menopause.”
“All I wanted since chemo began was to feel normal again. To be honest, I could never imagine how that was ever going to be possible during the treatment – cancer just becomes your life.”
It was after her chemo treatment finished that Dee took it upon herself to do her best to feel “normal.”
She says that she had been experiencing bouts of depression during chemo and that the idea of “sitting at home any longer” did not appeal to her.
So, she went back to work full time – just three weeks after completing her treatment.
“It was circumstances that forced me into it,” she says.
“I suffered from the radiation fatigue quite frequently at the beginning, about once a week. Now and then it still hits me but I usually just power through the day.
“Going back to work was the best decision. I was blessed in that my employer understood my situation and let me know that if it became too much for me, all I had to do was tell her.”
Dee says that she now listens to her body, allows herself to take a day or two off work if she needs it, and most importantly, can recognise when something is wrong.
It’s this mindset that she wishes she had adopted in the time leading up to her diagnosis – and one that she encourages other women to adhere to now.
“The main thing is to get over the mentality of ‘’It won’t happen to me,'” she says. “It could. I was the same, I never checked myself and I can’t stress this enough: I was stupid.”
“Check yourself. Look at yourself naked in the mirror. Be aware of your own body. You need to be able to tell when something is different or ‘off’ with your body.
“That could be a lump on your breast or your neck or your wrist. It could be discolouration, a change in skin texture or a hot area on your skin. If you find anything, get it checked out!
“Listen to your gut and go with your instinct (…) I’ve learned a lot about our health care system and I know that if you don’t look after your own health, nobody else will.”
Find out more about breast cancer signs and symptoms here or on the Marie Keating Foundation website.
You can follow Dee’s YouTube channel here.
