She’s young, she runs marathons, swims, cycles and takes pride in her health and fitness – but has already dealt with cancer twice. Claire Woolger, an English teacher from Bath, was 32 when she received a diagnosis of a cancer for the second time in her life. At 14, she had been diagnosed and treated for cancer in her muscles – and was in shock to receive a diagnosis of stage three breast cancer.
“Before the breast cancer diagnosis my life was gloriously ‘normal’ considering what I went through as a teenager,” Claire, now 33, remembers. I was very busy but also very happy working as a secondary school teacher teaching English and after thirteen years of being good friends from university, I had just got together in a relationship with my partner, Chris.
“I was running, including several half-marathons, even the completing a London Marathon for Teenage Cancer Trust in 2017, cycling and doing walking events for key cancer charities. Other than this lasting determination to fundraise for these charities, cancer and its impact had seemingly all but paled into the background.
“However, despite the return of the normality of life, I still had never quite been able to take it for granted – I felt fortunate. I still do.”
In early 2023, Claire got her first symptom – and given her history, took it seriously straight away. “I imagine most people are aware of checking for lumps with breast cancer, but my first symptom was in fact a nipple discharge from my right breast, which I put down to an injury having scratched myself while putting on a sports bra,” Claire recalls.
Claire runs marathons, swims, cycles and takes pride in her health and fitness
“At first, I couldn’t identify a lump myself. Even so, and even 17 years after the first cancer, the worry that it could be something more sinister, especially when I knew myself to be ‘high risk’ for breast cancer, was at the forefront of my mind – and prompted me to book up a GP appointment as soon as I could.”
Claire was fortunate in that her doctors took her seriously straight away. “My GP at the time was the first of many wonderfully compassionate health professionals,” she explains. “She listened and took my concerns seriously, identifying that there was a lump or ‘thickening’ in my breast in addition to the sporadic bleeding I’d been experiencing.
“Taking my medical history and ‘high risk’ of breast cancer status into account, she made an urgent referral to my local breast clinic. I understood that I was back in the funnel of ‘there’s something wrong, we need to find out – there is a chance it could be cancer’. As much as I wished not to be in this situation, I knew the process which had been set in motion, I also knew therefore, that there is only one feasible direction to travel in.
“At this point, all the fear and worry I had felt as a teenager going through the first diagnosis bubbled to the surface, becoming a consuming focus. The worry of the unknown and the imagining (or in my case – the remembering) was already compromising my enjoyment of life.”
Claire then received the diagnosis of stage three breast cancer, and was hit for six. “I was floored,” she said. “I felt disbelief mixed bizarrely with a sense of understanding – I knew the treatment as a teenager, for example, the radiotherapy to my chest area at a young age, had put me at slightly greater risk of developing other cancers – but it still felt surreal, perhaps even cruel, to hear those words again.
“In this moment, I lost trust in my body.”
The breast cancer Claire had was hormone positive which means its growth is fuelled by hormones such as oestrogen and progesterone. That meant that a key part of her treatment was been the suppression of these hormones, in case there were any cancer cells left. She was put into a medically induced menopause, and she still takes Tamoxifen daily along with a more recently approved drug called Abemaciclib, which is proven to reduce the chances of recurrence even further.
Shortly after the diagnosis, Claire had a right-sided simple mastectomy in May 2023, followed by six rounds of chemotherapy between June and October 2023. “I was offered reconstruction – but I was not sure and didn’t want to delay adjuvant chemotherapy, if I needed it – which I did because the cancer had spread locally to some lymph nodes,” Claire explains.
“As some of the chemotherapy drugs were the same ones I’d had as a teenager – my oncologist had to carefully ensure that the treatment plan featured less of those drugs and more of others. The side effects of treatment, such as hair loss, a compromised immunity and general unwellness were perhaps all the more challenging as a result of already having experienced them.
Claire with her partner Chris
“It meant I entered into my treatment with my eyes wide open. Along with the support from my family, friends and charities such as Breast Cancer Now and Macmillan, staff in the NHS – from catering staff and cleaners to consultant surgeons and my oncologist – have treated me with such incredible care and kindness that the brutality of treatment and of losing a breast aged 32, was made manageable.
“‘NHS Heroes’ is a term often coined and bandied around – but I think ‘hero’ does them a disservice, my care with both cancers was profoundly and beautifully human.
“There’s a special sort of love and gratitude for those people who, in their day-to-day work, are exposed to such raw suffering, and in the face of it choose to do their absolute very best to carry some of the strain, going the distance in making the next step of a gruelling treatment plan just that little bit more bearable.”
As well as the gruelling physical side effects, Claire also had to get to grips with the emotional difficulties of dealing with a second diagnosis. “On the day of the second diagnosis, I felt I had entirely lost my hopeful story of cancer survivorship,” she recalls. “I couldn’t really put words to that sense of disbelief of how on earth does this happen twice?
“I’m a runner, I’m a cyclist, I swim, I am fit and healthy. I had this sense of betrayal with my body and I was thinking ‘is there something wrong with me because no one else in my family has had cancer and I’ve had it twice.
“I’d just become a teacher and I was leaning into life and I had almost forgotten about my past cancer. It wasn’t something I thought about on a daily basis. There was certainly this element of ‘why me?’ There are sadly still too many examples of other children and teenagers who have been less fortunate, so sharing my story, especially through charity sporting events, had been giving me as much hope as I was endeavouring to inspire in others.
“I became the example I myself had needed going through the teenage cancer, and as a result of recognising this, I deliberately put my mind to leading and living the life I feared could have been snatched away. All of the emotions you might expect to have, like anger, fear, confusion, and more fear, with cancer were thus compounded by this with a second diagnosis.
Claire undergoing cancer treatment
(Image: Claire Woolger/Cover Images)
“I have learnt to accept now there will always be a little bit of fear to living life and some days this fear – of recurrence for example – is louder than others. Often people use battle language with cancer – ‘fight’, ‘survivor,’ ‘lost/won’ spring to mind. I personally believe the ‘fight’ is never really with the disease itself as such, and much more to do with managing the inevitable emotional fallout a cancer diagnosis entails.”
Claire also had to grapple with the difficulty of telling her loved ones that she was suffering from a cancer diagnosis yet again. “Perhaps the hardest thing in all of it was telling my parents that I had another cancer – a second cancer,” she adds. “At 14 with a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, I was old enough to remember how they had rallied, old enough to have been in some way aware of the emotional impact my illness had on them, and old enough to sense, in part, how they might have been carrying some of the load for me.
“Although I am not a parent myself, my experience of being an aunty coupled with my career as a teacher, has since served to strengthen my appreciation of what my parents must have gone through the first-time round. While I recognise that neither cancer diagnosis was my fault, telling them I was ill again, was understandably, very difficult.
“I never doubted their support and love – as with the rest of my family – It was just a cruel twist for them as parents to be in that position again. The thing about cancer is that it’s as much a mental hardship as it is a physical.”
Having gone through such a shocking diagnosis twice, Claire is determined to use her experience to raise awareness of breast cancer. “I would describe having two cancers by the age of 32 as having an 90-year old’s worldly-wise head on ‘younger’ shoulders,” she concludes. It’s knowing how precious and fragile life is but daring to hurl yourself at things anyway, because it’s a privilege to have the chance and be well enough.
“Most things are significantly less daunting than walking into a medical room for scan results and fearing the diagnosis. Having experienced firsthand the support of charities like Breast Cancer Now, my determination to volunteer with and fundraise for these charities has increased.
“I am now a ‘Voice’ for Breast Cancer Now, sharing my opinion on research and updates, and I volunteer for CoppaFeel as a Boobette giving presentations in schools, universities and workplaces to raise awareness of breast cancer affecting younger people. I have recently been accepted onto a Cancer Research Insight’s Panel for Children and Young People. All of this goes some way in helping me to ‘re-write’ my story of hope.”
Breast Cancer Now is the research and support charity here for anyone affected by breast cancer. Call their free helpline on 0808 800 6000 to speak to their expert nurses or find out more and donate at breastcancernow.org