I set a goal to take my children to school every day.

After Kate Middleton announced a few weeks ago that, at 42 years old, she suffers from cancer, the focus has once again been placed on those early-onset tumors that are detected in women or men under 50 years. The Princess of Wales has not specified which or in what stage, only that she is undergoing chemotherapy. The data confirms that cases have been increasing for decades. The largest study on the subject, published in the journal BMJ Oncology, concluded that in the period between 1990 and 2019, this type of tumors increased by 79.1% and the number of deaths related to them increased by 27.7%. The research points to dietary risk factors, alcohol consumption and smoking, but stresses that there is no pattern.

However, behind these figures many more stories lie far from the British Royal House. One of them, that of Cristina Pena. In fact, she has known what cancer is for a long time. In 2009, when she was 25, her mother died from one. She was diagnosed at 47. She suffered from a fairly large tumor that spread to the lymph nodes, she recalls. For a few months now, she has gone from experiencing it in the second person to being the protagonist. With that background, I had an annual follow-up in the Breast Unit. In December 2022, I wrote you an email because I noticed a lump in my left breast. I had an appointment for May and it was in case they could see me before.

That’s how it was, a few days later they summoned her. They do an ultrasound and check my left breast, which is what I’m complaining about. They confirmed that it was a lump of liquid, but by protocol they checked the other one as well and there they did see something that they didn’t like so much. It was breast cancer, but contrary to what one might think at first, it was not hereditary, but hormonal. The tumor was not the same one that his mother had suffered. She was 37 years old.

On February 28, I had the surgery. They removed both my breasts and they did the reconstruction in the same intervention, he explains. At that time, I still didn’t know if chemotherapy would be necessary afterwards. They studied the probability of it recurring and, due to age and family history, a high risk emerged. It was a pretty important blow, Cristina explains. On April 11, he underwent the first session of chemotherapy. It was a real ordeal on a neuropathic level. I couldn’t feel the soles of my feet, the tips of my fingers, I suffered pain everywhere.

Cristina ended up in the emergency room quite a few times. I have felt abandoned on several occasions. Obviously, being an oncology patient, you go directly to tests, analyzes and so on. But it’s curious because you are dealing with some side effects that an oncology treatment is giving you and in reality you are treated by a lot of specialties, but not yours. Unless you go during the hours in which they give consultations.

small goals

By the fourth session of chemotherapy, his hair began to fall out. I had already experienced it with my mother. I have seven-year-old twins and an older daughter who is 19 and, although I didn’t really know how to deal with the issue, I didn’t want to dramatize it, she says. Thus, from the Mother’s Unit itself, a book was provided for the little ones to take to school. The protagonist of it is a mother who suffers from cancer. She took it to school and, after talking about it with the tutor, they read it in class before she started chemotherapy. That’s how it sounded to them. One day, back home, they told me that the teacher had read it to them. Until the time came to confess to the little ones that her mother was going to go through the same process as the protagonist of the book. I told them: “Do you remember that story? They are going to give me the same medicine,” she says. And when that hair loss was very evident, one took the clippers, another the broom and dustpan, and got to work.

Consider that depending on how you face it, I think that’s how you get through it. He assures that he set small goals that encouraged him to move forward: I decided to take my children to school every day; although afterwards I would spend the whole day in bed. Another of her great supporters was her husband, Romn. If I put 50%, the other remaining percentage. Unfortunately my mother was no longer here and my father had also died when she was pregnant with the little ones, following a stroke. My supporters were my husband, brother and children.

A possibility that resonated in his mind

Since he lost his mother to this disease, the word cancer was on his mind. I always told my husband that. Although Don’t think I was going to suffer from it so young.. Even so, she considers herself lucky because it was detected before her annual appointment at the Breast Unit. My mother’s tumor measured almost 11 centimeters, mine 3 and a smaller one 0.6. If she had waited the remaining months, they would surely be much bigger, she says.

After chemotherapy came radiotherapy. Subsequently, the oncologist proposed hormonal treatment in pills, but it was necessary to suspend it due to the side effects it generated: My joints became inflamed all over my body. Right now they are giving me a hormonal injection that basically causes you to become menopausal and suffer the same symptoms as any woman who goes through this stage.

They are monitoring him because in the last PEC CT scan, one of the lymph nodes lit up a little, so in June I have to repeat it again; but otherwise, all the tests come out fine and I’m working. Emotionally, she says, she is also feeling better and better. And one of the reasons is to be able to go to psychological therapy through the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC). Everything influences. I already have some hair and I look better physically. Furthermore, although I had just been fired when I was diagnosed, now I have gone back to work and it is the best thing that has happened to me, Cristina confesses.