Maggie's gave me back hope

In the last six years she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, had a double mastectomy, received radiation to her spine when a tumour was discovered there, and just last October was told she now has cancer in her stomach lining.

Yet talk to the 55-year-old mother-of-four and she is bouncing with energy, and laughs when she says in her Irish lilt: "There's a lot of years in me yet. I should only have lasted two-and-a-half years, but I'm still here."

Indeed, the one thing which completely floored her during her health worries was when her husband Andrew left her a year after her first diagnosis.

Through it all - the tumours, the operations, the therapies, the drugs, the divorce - there has been a place where Barbara has been able to let off steam, to relax and to ultimately keep going - the Edinburgh Maggie's Centre.

Next week, Barbara will take to the stage at a charity fundraiser, the Ladies Love Lunch event, at the Sheraton Grand in Lothian Road, to tell her story and help ensure thousands are raised for the centre in its 15th anniversary year which, she says, has helped save her life.

"If it wasn't there, if it didn't exist, then I don't think I'd be here now," says Barbara matter-of-factly. "It's a place where you can go, and you go in feeling so down, everything's negative, and then when you come out everything is positive again. It's wonderful, marvellous, and I can't stress enough how much it has helped me."

Barbara's cancer was discovered during a routine appointment at the Western General's breast clinic where she had been attending because she had developed cysts. "They were keeping an eye on them and one time I went in and Mike Dixon, my consultant and ultimately my surgeon, saw that something had changed.

"Scans and tests later and they told me I had two tumours in each breast, and that a double mastectomy, plus the removal of lymph nodes, was the only option.

"It was devastating news. My former husband and I could barely take it in. I went to Maggie's and met one of the professional counsellors there, Izzy, and she just made me feel so calm. That there was nothing to be nervous about. By the time I left, all I was feeling was hope. I went back a few times before the operation to talk about my concerns and fears - I'm a great believer in talking about things."

She adds: "In hospital, it's all so clinical, as it has to be, they are there to rid you of the cancer, but at Maggie's it's more about you as a person. How you can face what's happening, rather than feeling helpless."

Maggie's, inspired by cancer patient Maggie Keswick Jencks, opened in Edinburgh in 1996. Since then, the groundbreaking model of care has been replicated at Maggie's Centres around the UK.

Barbara, who lives in Morningside, attended relaxation classes which she says helped her face her mastectomy without feeling stressed.

However, ten days after the operation came the devastating news that 26 of the 27 lymph nodes removed from her right side had been cancerous. "They didn't know if it had spread," she says. "I had more scans and tests, then the day before I was due to start chemo, I was told they'd found a shadow on my spine. There was no cure for it, but a good drug treatment.

"My husband and I were totally shattered. I had to come back the next day for an MRI, and I wanted someone to speak to my husband because he was in bits. We both went to Maggie's where my husband spoke to the director, Andrew Anderson, who is just marvellous.

"He's a most caring, wonderful guy, with an extraordinary aptitude to listen to what you're really saying. We had loads of questions, like how long did I have to live and how do we tell our four sons - my youngest was just 12 at the time - that their mother has incurable cancer?

"He told me about a woman who had come in eight years after having secondary breast cancer. I've done six years now and I'm going OK." Luckily, the drug regime worked for Barbara and her spine has neither worsened nor given her problems with walking or movement.

What happened next, though, she says, was ten times worse than the cancer. Husband Andrew, a dentist, left. "It completely floored me," she says. "That has been the thing which has affected me most in my life, not the cancer. I couldn't believe he left when I most needed him. I took a deep depression and I left my job at the Sick Kids where I worked in administration. I couldn't do it all any more.

"The place I turned to for help was Maggie's. Depression can affect cancer, it can feed off it because your mind and body are not working 100 per cent and it can take hold again.

"Andrew Anderson was adamant that I went to see him. He was there for me. He helped build me up again, made me feel good about myself.

"I'd like people to know that Maggie's is not just for when you have an initial diagnosis, it's there for you forever, even if you're free of cancer."

Sadly, Barbara isn't at that stage. In October last year came the latest diagnosis of cancer of the stomach lining. "I had moved from Colinton to Morningside, and I just thought 'I'm not going to see my lovely garden in the summer', but now I am taking chemo tablets for the first time, as well as carrying on with complementary therapies to boost my immune system, and things appear to be working.

"I'm well, but I tire easily. But I've got a great support network of girlfriends and my sons. Richard, 28, Philip, who's 25, Peter, 21, and Patrick, 17, are fantastic. Richard comes with me now to the hospital. They've never asked too many questions, but when they have I've told them the truth.

"Patrick used to have it in his head that he'd go to school and come home and I wouldn't be there. I had to tell him that would never happen. They know I won't be an old lady, but we don't go further than that."

She adds: "I have a strong faith - and, of course, Maggie's. I might be writing my will, but as Maggie Jencks said 'what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying'."