Three months into her pregnancy with her third child, 40-year-old Clair Milling of the United Kingdom knew something was off. She felt a lump in her armpit, and although she was aware that "your body changes in all weird and wonderful ways” during pregnancy, she called her doctor just to be sure. Flash forward to today. Her youngest son, Elliott, is 7 months old and Milling has learned the worst — she has breast cancer. Faced with a terminal prognosis, the mom is sharing her heartbreaking story to encourage other moms to prioritize their health instead of feeling “selfish” for doing so.
For years, the mom of three said she would put herself last for fear of being a bad mom.
“I used to say to myself, ‘Oh my God, I am dying for a wee’ and then I would hold it for like hours because I wouldn’t want to leave the children by themselves. And the irony in that now is that I’m going to leave the children without me forever,” the mom of Sebastian, 5, and Olivia, 2, and baby Elliott said in a video she posted August 28 on Facebook.
Now she’s urging other people to not let that happen to them.
But this was more serious than skipping bathroom breaks, and it started when she was pregnant.
It was a lump. “I was shaving and I saw that my armpit was — instead of being inwards as your armpit is — was protruding,” she explained in the video.
Wen she asked about it, her doctor told her it was “swollen glands under my armpit and blocked ducts in my breasts due to pregnancy,” she told Today.
It was a reasonable explanation to the mom — why would she even question it?
The rest of her pregnancy flew by without a hitch, but even after Elliott was born, she could tell her body was off. Breastfeeding was hard with Elliott in a way it wasn’t with her older kids, and she was only producing milk in her left breast.
“I said to the nurse at the time, ‘I am not getting any milk out of my right breast. It is really hard. It is solid,’” she said in the video.
But again she was told the issue was normal. The nurse said that most likely her milk duct was clogged and she should massage it to get the milk to flow. Again, Milling took the advice at face value. After all, “they are the experts.”
Then the coronavirus became a global pandemic and Milling was hesitant to reach out to her doctors about her ongoing concerns.
With so many hospitals and medical professionals rushing to take care of the thousands and thousands of people getting sick, Milling didn’t want to “bother people.” Even after she felt something disturbing while she was taking a bath.
“So my left nipple was lovely and normal, poking in the right direction. My right nipple was inverted,” she explained in the video. "I thought that is not right.”
Milling had enough, so she called her doctor the next day.
In June, she went through a series of tests that confirmed her intuition was right — she had breast cancer and it already spread to her lymph nodes in her right arm, the left side of her neck, and “behind my ribs and between my lungs.”
“My diagnosis has hit us hard. If I could turn back time I would, but now I need to focus on the future and the time I have left whilst trying to raise awareness to people," she shared.
“(My husband) is struggling to come to terms that his wife, best friend and mother of his children is dying and they will never get the chance to do all the things they wanted to do when growing old together,” she continued.
That is why she wants everyone to make their own health a priority.
Check yourself now and today, she urged in the video.
“I made up a lot of excuses why I didn’t (check myself). I’ve got three children. I don’t have time to check myself. I’m in the shower, I’m out, I’m done, which is fair, we all do that,” she said.
So far, Milling has undergone two rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy and has four more rounds to go, which she’s hoping will give her more time to live, Today reported. But with the time she has left, she’s decided to use her story to inspire others to take care of themselves today before things are too late. A GoFundMe campaign has since been created for Milling to help her pay for her medical expenses.
“Please check yourselves. I'm not just talking about cancer, anything … anything you're not feeling quite right about,” she said. "Ring the doctor. They're there to be bothered. You have to do it.”
