Spooner responded well to treatment and, while not wishing to go through chemotherapy again, is grateful for the \u201cmidlife crisis\u201d which prompted her to take up rugby aged 40. \u201cI was the strongest and fittest that I\u2019d ever been,\u201d says Spooner, whose two children play in Medway\u2019s junior section. \u201cI was starting to really enjoy my rugby. I was losing weight, but I put that down to getting fitter. But the chemotherapy was still tough. The toughest thing was signing each consent form on the side-effects you could get.\u201d<\/p>\n
A diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer (a relatively uncommon but aggressive form of the disease) caused by the BRCA1 mutation meant she opted for a double mastectomy to eliminate the chance of the cancer returning. In the future, she is likely to have her ovaries removed, too, as the same gene increases the risk of developing ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n
After having breast reconstruction implants and getting the all-clear in January this year, she has plans to return to the rugby pitch, if her body is able. \u201cI know my fitness isn\u2019t there,\u201d Spooner says. \u201cThe chemo did affect my heart a bit \u2013 my heart rate is still a bit higher than what it was \u2013 and chemotherapy can alter the bone density so for a contact sport, that\u2019s not ideal. I\u2019d like to get back to training, even if it\u2019s controlled. When I had my implants put in, I wanted to know how long they last and if I can play rugby with them. They said I could, but we\u2019ll wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the prospect of her sharing a pitch with Ali \u2013 this time on the same side \u2013 is heartening, given how their lives unexpectedly collided at the right place and right time. \u201cIt\u2019s mind-boggling to me that everything lined up perfectly for that interaction to happen,\u201d Ali says. \u201cI think about that and it\u2019s crazy. What if I had gotten her face? What if she managed to wrap her arms around me, or if we had played on the same team that day? None of it might have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, Spooner counts herself as one of the lucky ones, but wants to use her story to warn younger women to check their breasts for lumps. \u201cWhat\u2019s really scary is that in the six months I was on that chemo ward, there weren\u2019t many women over the age of 50,\u201d she says. \u201cThey were all younger than me. I was considered one of the oldest, at 42. There were a lot of women who were in their late 20s, 30s suffering from this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spooner responded well to treatment and, while not wishing to go through chemotherapy again, is grateful for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2199,847,59,23451,90,217,5438,58919,56,54,55,120148,54657],"class_list":{"0":"post-517369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-breast-cancer","9":"tag-cancer","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-rugby-union","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sport","14":"tag-standard","15":"tag-top-story","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom","19":"tag-womens-fitness","20":"tag-womens-sport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}