Meet the Yorkshire teaching assistant marking ten years since breast cancer diagnosis with fundraising walk in Iceland

At that check, nearing ten years ago now, Emma’s doctor found a lump and she was referred to Doncaster Royal Infirmary for further tests. Just weeks later, she received the results of a biopsy and was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 35. It was “a huge shock”, she reflects of that day in 2014. “Your life just falls apart, I think, as soon as you hear those words.”

A decade on, the now 44-year-old is preparing for a fundraising challenge with friends and family to mark ten years since her diagnosis and “celebrate being alive”. In June this year, she will take part in The MoonWalk Iceland, a 26.2-mile walk in the Lake Myvatn region. The event, organised by breast cancer charity Walk The Walk, sees people wear decorative bras as they take on the route whilst raising money. The organisation then uses the cash to grant funds for research, provide emotional and physical support for those living with cancer, and help prevention efforts.

Emma will be walking as part of a team of eight, all from Doncaster, including her mother-in-law, Jo Horgan. The pair signed up for The MoonWalk London whilst mum-of-three Emma was still undergoing chemotherapy. She opted for a single mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy as her initial treatment. “I just thought, ‘Get it out, quick, I just don’t want it in my body’,” she says.

Around a year later, Emma had her other breast removed and reconstruction surgery. “It’s always on your mind that [cancer] is going to come back, it’s going to appear somewhere else. If I still had the other breast, I think those thoughts would have been worse,” she says.

“Now, for someone to tell me you’re going to have chemo, lose your hair, have surgery, my whole life would fall apart again but when you’re going through it you just do what you have to do. If you told me now I’d lose my hair, I’d be devastated but at the time when I lost it, it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. I dealt with it, you just deal with it, get on with it and carry on.”

Browsing Facebook during one of her chemotherapy treatments, Emma and Jo spotted a post about a group of friends signing up for the MoonWalk. They decided to sign up too. Emma finished her treatment at Christmastime in 2014 and began training within weeks, at that point only able to manage to walk to the end of the street.

“It was what I needed, it was really good. I’d put on a fair bit of weight with the treatment…This was something to focus my mind, get me up, get me out, and lose the weight I’d put on. It kept me going. Walking 26 miles is something I think most people would find a struggle, but they could do it. But walking 26 miles in the freezing cold at midnight is another thing. But it was so good – there was so many people.”

When the pair took part in the event, they agreed that they would celebrate ten years on from Emma’s diagnosis by taking part in The MoonWalk Iceland. “At that point, I didn’t know if I would live to see that ten years but I have so we’re going,” says Emma, a teaching assistant at a primary school. “I’m looking forward to it, really excited, it’s going to be an experience.”

Emma’s proud husband Jonathan and three children, aged 13, 20 and 22, will be following her journey and she will be joined for the walk by friends from a local gym. “I’m thrilled to be celebrating the fact that after ten years, I’m still here,” she says. “I know that I’ve changed as a person over the last ten years – I used to be quite timid and would be bothered about what people thought of me. Now, I just don’t care.

“My message to everyone is just to be vigilant. I was very young and breast cancer was the furthest thing from my mind. Whatever your age, you should check your breasts regularly...You need to know what your ‘normal’ is, to be able to know when something isn’t right and get it checked out.”

To sign up for The MoonWalk Iceland 2024, go to www.walkthewalk.org