As she glanced at her phone, Nikki Ratcliffe saw her brother-in-law was desperately trying to call her. While it wasn’t unusual for him to ring to see how her day was going, this phone call felt different. As soon as she said, “Hello,” her whole world turned upside down. “It all happened really quickly,” she tells us. “After my sister, Tracey, was diagnosed with breast cancer two years before, she’d often spend time in hospital, but she’d always say that it would all be fine, they were just going to stabilise her and then she’d be back home.”
“Then I got that devastating call from my brother-in-law to say she had just hours left to live. She wanted to die at home, but they didn’t get her there in time. Even though I knew it was going to happen, I got angry and broke down. She was 49 with two young children.”
Despite Tracey living in New Zealand with her husband and 10 and nine-year-old daughters, she and her younger sister Nikki, now 52, had remained close. With their shared love of clothes, the pair could spend hours in London shopping until they dropped – and even managed to rope in their “tomboy” sister Michelle Blackburn, 55, occasionally. But when Tracey found a pea-sized lump in her breast while having a shower and was subsequently diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in 2014, the trio became even closer. "As soon as we found out it had spread, we dropped everything and went to New Zealand to be with her,” explains Michelle.
More devastating news
“Tracey never spoke about her diagnosis so we didn’t really know the full extent of it. She was in denial almost. She wanted to protect her children as she didn’t want them to see their mum dying. It was really, really hard,” adds Nikki. It was Tracey’s husband who revealed her diagnosis was terminal.
“Every time we flew back, we gave her a hug, thinking, ‘Is this the last time?’ She didn’t want to talk about it, she didn’t want to acknowledge she was going to pass, so it didn’t feel our place to bring it up. It was weird, but looking back I understand why she did what she did. She died one week after Michelle had last visited her. It was like she’d been holding on.”
Sadly, as they worked to rebuild their lives after their beloved sister’s death, the family was dealt the devastating blow that Michelle had been diagnosed with the cruel disease just four years after Tracey’s passing. After her first routine mammogram at 51, the mum-of-two was diagnosed with grade three HER2+ breast cancer in October 2020.
“My husband Hugh was allowed with me to get my biopsy results despite being in lockdown. When I went in, the breast cancer nurse was there and I knew it was going to be bad news. And when they actually said the words I thought, ‘I’m going to die. I’m going to die like Tracey died,’” she admits.
“I was frozen with fear. When we got home, I didn’t know what to do. My husband drove me straight to my parents’ house so I could tell them. He called Nikki with the news as I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t believe it was happening to us again.”
Michelle found support in her husband as well as their then 17-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter. But as she rested at home after a day of chemotherapy, Michelle received an unexpected knock on the door. It was Nikki. She’d received the news she had grade three invasive breast cancer.
“I’d always had it in my head that it was going to come and get me, but I tried to put it out of my mind. I checked myself for lumps, and in December 2020, I felt like something wasn’t right,” Nikki explains. “It sounds really odd, but I went walking a lot at the time and a robin used to follow me everywhere. I used to joke and go, ‘Oh, hi Tracey. Do you want to tell me something?’ It was spooky. In February I had a mammogram and I was told there had been some changes from my last scan. The doctor said they needed to do a biopsy. I was diagnosed on 15 March 2021,” she says. “I passed out when I heard the news. I headed to Michelle’s house with my leaflet and said, ‘I’ve joined the club.’”
Treatment and impact
As Michelle continued with her treatment, mum-of-two Nikki underwent a double mastectomy and reconstruction. Living just 20 minutes apart, Nikki was on hand to support Michelle. “I was OK – I joked that I had the boobs of a 20-year-old. I even showed her my new boobs and she playfully said, ‘I’ll ask for the other design,’” Nikki laughs.
Michelle, who also had a double mastectomy at the end of her treatment and is now awaiting reconstruction, adds, “She was amazing. I couldn’t do anything for her because of the chemo. I wasn’t driving and I was tired all the time, but I would have if I could. Nikki and I didn’t have a particularly close relationship before, she was the annoying little sister, but it’s brought us closer and we talk a lot more.”
Three years on from Nikki’s diagnosis, both sisters, who have tested negative for the BRCA gene, are disease-free. However, the impact of breast cancer remains with them. “There wasn’t a big celebration because you live with the fear that it’s going to come back, especially with what happened to Tracey,” explains Michelle. “Every little lump and bump, every time you feel sick, you worry that the cancer’s back.”
With October marking Breast Cancer Awareness month, the pair are encouraging others to check their breasts regularly and to Wear It Pink on 18 October to raise money for Breast Cancer Now, to help fund lifechanging research and support. Having benefited from the “life-changing” support of the charity, they’re also keen to emphasise that help is out there.
“If you’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer, never feel on your own because Breast Cancer Now is there to support you,” says Nikki. “It’s so important to catch it early, it makes all the difference. If Tracey had caught it earlier, she’d likely still be here.”
Wear It Pink on 18 October to help fund Breast Cancer Now’s life-changing research and support. You can sign up at wearitpink.org/signup. For more information about Breast Cancer Now’s free services, visit breastcancernow.org