Peer support: ‘Younger women with kids are getting this type of cancer. I’m four years since diagnosis so I can give them hope’
When Martina Balfe recovered from triple negative cancer, she wanted to ‘pay it forward’ by volunteering to provide support to current cancer patients via a helpline
When people are diagnosed with cancer, they need hope
“I was glad to speak to somebody who was still alive,” Martina Balfe says. She is describing her conversation with an Irish Cancer Society Peer Support volunteer, a phone call that happened when Martina had begun her treatment for breast cancer.
What she needed at the time, she recalls now, is someone who understood exactly what she was going through.
“I felt like I was floating out to sea,” she says of when she first got a diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer in March 2021.
“Everyone I spoke to had advice,” she continues, explaining that it was never advice for her specific type of cancer, a rare form of breast cancer typically diagnosed in younger women.
More difficult still, the two women she had found through Instagram who were going through treatment for the same diagnosis, both based in the UK, one of whom she had met with in real life several times, had since died. She needed someone who could give her hope.
The diagnosis, which came around St. Patrick’s Day 2021, had been a terrible shock. What she thought was a strain picked up during a zoom exercise class had become “excruciatingly” painful: “It was like nerve pain, all across my chest, my back, into my neck.”
When she went to her GP, he found a lump she herself had not noticed. A week later she attended the Mater Breast Clinic.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all, I was expecting to get pain killers,” she says.
At the breast clinic, she underwent a triple assessment; an examination, a mammogram and ultrasound, and a biopsy. That day, she was told by one of the doctors that they felt this was “sinister and suspicious,” and that she was to bring someone with her when she returned in two weeks for her results.
“I don’t think I have ever felt as bad in my life,” Martina, who at the time was 48, recalls. Her children were then 23 and 16, the younger doing their Junior Certificate. “I went to pieces. I can’t even describe the mental anguish. I couldn’t eat, sleep. It was horrendous.”
In part, she puts the anxiety down to shock at the speed of her diagnosis; not having found the lump herself, there was no time for her to begin to process what was happening. The counsellor she later availed of through the Irish Cancer Society reassured her that the anxiety she felt was partly related to this shock.
There is also the fact that Martina’s mother Phyllis was diagnosed with cancer at the same age, in her case ovarian cancer. She passed away when she was 52 years old.
“She was stage four at diagnosis – they were just prolonging her life (with treatment),” Martina says. “So in my mind, I felt that I was going to be the same as my mother, so weak, so sick.”
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When Martina and her husband returned to hospital two weeks later, she was given a diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer. Her doctor told her it was an aggressive cancer that affects younger women, and that her tumour was the size of a lemon. The cancer was also in the lymph nodes.
Two more weeks of anxiety followed while she awaited the results of scans to see if the cancer had spread. When her sister told her she had never seen anyone so distraught, Martina recalls telling her, “I feel like I’m grieving. I’m grieving for my life that I had a couple of weeks ago. And now I’m a sick woman with what could be a terminal diagnosis, based on the cancer type I have. I’m grieving for my kids, that I’m going to be a sick mammy”.
The cancer had not spread beyond a couple of lymph nodes. Martina was given a treatment plan which started with “very aggressive” chemotherapy, a lumpectomy and radiotherapy. It was at this point, after starting chemotherapy, that Martina felt the need to speak to someone who had gone through what she was experiencing.
“I phoned the helpline of the Irish Cancer Society,” she explains. “I was looking to speak to someone who was out the other side of this type of treatment. They put me in contact with this really nice girl, it was three years since she finished her treatment.”
Given that this is a rare form of breast cancer, it took a little while to find someone to match Martina with.
“The positive was this girl was so well. She was over the worst of it, and she told me that the radiotherapy was not going to be as hard as the chemo. It was great to talk to somebody. We had a bit of a laugh as well, different stories about kids,” Martina recalls.
Most importantly, her conversation with the Peer Support Volunteer helped to quell some of her terror.
“It left me with hope, because this girl was the same age as me. I had made friends with two other women, and the two of them died. So I was really struggling. I rang the peer support because I needed to speak to somebody who was three or four years out of this treatment and hadn’t died, because these women were all I knew. I didn’t know anybody else who had survived past a year or 18 months after diagnosis.”
After her own successful treatment – Martina has had no evidence of disease since September 2021 and has been clear since – she knew she wanted to volunteer for the ICS. She remembered the scarcity of volunteers with her rare diagnosis: “They had to (go) find somebody. So I decided to go down that route, volunteer to do the peer support.”
Deirdre Murphy is the Irish Cancer Society’s Survivor Support Coordinator, who oversees the Peer Support Volunteers.
She describes the peer support as “the society’s one-to-one support programme. A phone support programme, (a person) can talk to trained volunteers who have gone through a similar experience, or are going through a similar experience, in relation to people who’ve had advanced cancer. It’s a listening ear from someone who really understands what it is like to have a cancer diagnosis, and to go through that treatment”.
The peer support service offers “practical information, reassurance, and support.” They do not, obviously, offer medical advice but can describe their experience of a treatment.
Breast cancer survivor Martina Balfe: ‘I got a second chance.’ Photo: Gerry Mooney
The peer support service offers “practical information, reassurance, and support.” They do not, obviously, offer medical advice but can describe their experience of a treatment.
Volunteers initially meet with the ICS, who outline what the role involves, before taking part in the training programme.
Deirdre describes this as “very much about giving them the resources and skills to take that phone call, support somebody who is going through cancer. The training is very much around boundaries, what your role is as a volunteer, what we expect from you. We provide support to our volunteers as well.”
Irish Cancer Society nurses will match volunteers to patients as closely as possible in terms of their experiences.
“If it’s a younger woman diagnosed with cancer and she has an issue around maybe talking to her children, or how to navigate the world of work, then they can be matched to another younger woman who has gone through a similar thing.
“It can be matching around the cancer, but also that practical, emotional or life issue a person might have. Maybe dating. Do you tell someone on the first date, ‘I’ve had a mastectomy’? It could be a man with prostate cancer, who has to make a decision around what treatment route they can take. They can talk to two of our volunteers about going down the route of radiotherapy, or surgery. They won’t tell you what to do,” Deirdre says, emphasising that medical advice is not given.
She lists some other experiences a volunteer might cover: living with a stoma, what to wear leaving hospital after reconstruction surgery, living with erectile dysfunction if you have been treated for a specific type of cancer.
There are three core groups of volunteers: those with a primary diagnosis who are now well and no longer in treatment; those living with advanced cancer who are a year stable in their diagnosis and disease; and parents of children who have had cancer, who are well now.
“This person is going to listen to you from a space of understanding. Often service users would have a specific question,” Deirdre explains. It is also someone outside their circle of family and friends, who can provide an entirely anonymous, typically one-off, call.
Of the volunteers’ motivations, she says it is a chance to “give something back, pay it forward. In the giving, they are receiving”.
Martina’s first call as a volunteer was with a young woman. “She had only had a baby. She really wanted to speak to somebody who was out the other side. That’s all anybody wants.” They discussed hair loss, wigs, bandanas.
“And then it’s the emotional side of going through cancer,” Martina adds. “I think people’s worst fear is because they’re looking at Google. Film would also always show people going through chemotherapy as really thin, pale, with maybe a basin bedside them. But a lot of the time that isn’t the case at all. The anti-sickness medications now are quite good. I think the treatments have improved in the last few years.”
“I would tell them exactly what I went through. The fact that I’m four years since diagnosis, I can help people. It’s younger women with small babies and small kids that are getting this type of cancer. If it helps people, puts them in a good humour, gives them hope, a bit of a laugh on the phone call … it does me good as well.”
Typically, one of the first things that people worry about is their job and money, something Martina understands from her own experience; the concern over making ends meet.
As an office manager, Martina worked from home throughout her treatment, something she found comforting in the context of cancer taking away so much of one’s sense of control.
It’s a topic that often comes up with people now on a call, and she can advise them on that aspect of their situation.
Self-blame is also an issue: “I’ve found on the calls people worry about, ‘did I drink too much? I used to smoke. Did I not eat enough fibre?’. I say to people, and I really believe it, no one is to blame for getting it. It’s an unlucky lottery. The fact that they want to talk to me, I feel sort of privileged.”
I wonder if talking about the experience of cancer ever upsets her or brings up past difficulties. Martina demurs, explaining that cancer is now a part of her daily life. She also has a group of peer supporters who stay in contact, supporting each other.
“I think about it every day. Me having breast cancer, it nearly defines me now. I don’t forget that I had it. So, when I’m talking to people, it’s not bringing me back four years, because it never leaves me,” she says.
Of her own motivations for being a volunteer, she says, “I think I felt I got a second chance, the treatment worked, and I want to help people who are going through it.”
Triple negative breast cancer: the facts
Symptoms of breast cancer include:
This Daffodil Day, the Irish Cancer Society are urging the public to stand with cancer patients and survivors. The Irish Cancer Society typically receives only 5pc of its income from the Government, so they rely on the public’s generosity to provide their vital free services and support to ensure nobody in Ireland faces cancer alone. Funds raised on Daffodil Day also fund groundbreaking cancer research and trials, throughout Ireland.
The Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day takes place on Friday, March 28, 2025. Click here to donate today.
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