A 37-year-old mum with only 'months to live' has been forced to plan her own funeral after an 'itch' turned out to be breast cancer. Tiffany Ryan went to the doctors in April last year with what she assumed was a harmless itchy muscular knot just below her collar bone, Wales Online reports.
However, she received the heart breaking news she had stage 2 breast cancer from the results of a biopsy and mammogram and was told she would have to undergo a mastectomy. Tiffany was hopeful to be told that she had beaten the disease on January 5 2023 following her surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
However, she was told the cancer was now terminal, having spread to her lungs and pelvis, leaving her to start making preparations for her own funeral. The mum-of-two says she doesn't want to leave her husband Matt, 38, with the stress of her funeral arrangements and has even already sorted her own coffin which will be wrapped in a daffodil-themed vinyl rather than having a 'boring brown' box.
Tiffany, who works as a permanent carer for her autistic eight-year-old son said: "I've decided on a female funeral director, who I feel really comfortable with. I want my funeral to be a positive event.
"I'm not particularly religious, but my children love to go to our local church - so I don't want the event to be there. Instead I'm going to have a 'green funeral' in an outdoors woodland area. My children shouldn't have to see me be cremated at the church they love.
"I want them to feel comfortable there and safe when I'm gone - not to have it constantly remind them of my death. All of this is really hard on my husband too, he wants to take things just one week at a time, sorting out issues like power of attorney and wills.
"I don't want him to have to deal with that later though, but it is very strange planning my own funeral while some mums I know on the school run are still having children. Funerals are also expensive.
"The average funeral costs about £5,000 - so doing that along with everyday expenses and the mortgage is really difficult." Doctors have warned Tiffany she may only have months left to live so she has prepared 'memory capsules' with video messages and letters to her young children who are just three and eight-years-old.
She was initially told by doctors in January that she may not live to see her daughter's fourth birthday - which is next week, meaning she has beaten the odds. Despite her ill health, Tiffany says she feels 'totally normal' and is not in any pain at all which she says is the 'strangest part' of all.
She added: "I'm not in pain, I'm still doing the normal school run and going to hospital while my children are in school. Doctors have told me that it's inoperable now.
"The one thing they could do was give me a tablet to slow it down - but that's it. I think at first I just went into a state of denial. I asked for a second opinion, drug trials - anything that would prolong it.
"There was a lot of anger, sadness, depression and anxiety. I didn’t know whether to tell people, I just sat at home and let it sink in for a while.
"I'm now having to compress all of these Christmases, birthdays and other special occasions into a very short amount of time. It's horrible knowing that my children might not even remember my voice, so I'm planning on making recordings of myself as well as leaving them birthday gifts and notes."
Tiffany and her husband Matt, who works as an IT engineer, have started trying to build special family memories together with the time they have left while her children do not know about her condition. The family have a log cabin booked for the end of March along with a 'glamping' trip at the end of the year.
Tiffany added: "It's hard to arrange spending time away together, booking holidays abroad is especially complicated because I would need to be near hospitals. If something happened I could become stuck abroad - so we're only booking holidays in the UK for the moment.
"We just want to go somewhere that we can go for a week and pretend to be normal - so that they can remember me." To donate to Tiffany's GoFundMe visit - https://www.gofundme.com/f/9v3u4h-help-me-make-some-memories
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